Virginia Economic Review

When Lydia Ruffin began work as a restaurant server, her goal was to support herself through school. She could not have anticipated how profoundly that entry-level job would shape her career.

Sixty years after The Jetsons promised a future of personal-sized spacecraft that moved people and things safely through crowded skies, that vision, or something like it, is ever closer — thanks to a Virginia company that’s a global leader in building digital air highways.