Va. Leadership: The Power 50
What does power mean? How do you determine who wields more than others? How can you measure an intangible but very real force? In our annual list of the 50 most powerful leaders in Virginia, we set out to do just that, considering the number of employees an executive leads, personal wealth and other metrics. […]
Smooth sailing for Virginia’s publicly traded companies, except Boeing
Overall, Virginia’s largest publicly traded companies saw 2024 as a successful year, reflecting the nation’s economic upswing of about 3% each quarter. Except for Boeing and “its ghastly record,” as George Mason University’s Terry Clower memorably said late last year about the Arlington-based Fortune Global 500 aerospa[...]
Trump 2.0 could impact state business climate
For millennials and hipper Gen X-ers, here’s a question: Are you feeling like the “This is fine” dog in the burning kitchen? And for the Boomers, can we offer you the image of a frog sitting in a pot of quickly heating water? Even if neither image makes sense, this much is clear: There’s a […]
Va. looks to produce more ‘middle-skilled’ workers
When Tennessee-based Microporous officials visited Virginia in 2022 to scout locations for a new plant, Danville leaders took them to local public schools. That might seem like an unusual field trip, but choosing the right site for a manufacturing operation is not as simple as picking a plot of land anymore, says Julie Brown, vi[...]
Va. Leadership: On the move
B. Marc Allen CEO, Electra.aero, Manassas Allen joined the aviation startup in August 2024, after having served as Boeing’s chief strategy officer and president of Boeing International. A graduate of Princeton University and Yale Law School, Allen clerked for former U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Anthony M. Kennedy. He i[...]
Va. community colleges and businesses help fill in-demand jobs
Virginia had about 295,000 unfilled jobs as of November 2024, according to a U.S. Department of Labor report released in January, but it’s not as simple as sending people to job interviews to fill these positions. Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s administration notes that these are good jobs for skilled workers, but there are long-term[...]
Our View: Making Virginia grate again
For the state where the United States was born and the roots of the American Revolution were planted (see editor’s note below), it’s an ironic fact that Virginia is heavily dependent on the largesse of the federal government. The state’s so-called “Golden Crescent” — the prosperous corridor running roughly along [...]
Northern Va. Year-in-Review: Region looks to tech, bioscience for expansion
The proliferation of data centers in Northern Virginia remains a perennial topic, and while they remained a headline among economic development deals for the region in 2024, they were not the only highlight as parts of the region look to tech and biosciences. Last year started on the coattails of two massive announcements that c[...]
Southwest Va. Year-in-Review: Regional cooperation nets manufacturing projects
Southwest Virginia is weathering the economic disruptions of the transition from coal and a pandemic-related shift to remote work by focusing on a collaborative approach to business attraction. Teamwork is yielding results with a bump in manufacturing deals, punctuated by the November 2024 announcement that Wrap Technologies wou[...]