Virginia Economic Review

Michelle Williams is the new talent and digital strategies program manager at the Roanoke Regional Partnership (RRP). Julia Boas headed up the RRP’s talent strategies until recently taking over as director of business investment.

Andy Edmunds is the director of the Virginia Film Office, an arm of the Virginia Tourism Corporation tasked with expanding the motion picture industry in Virginia.

Virginia’s unique place in American history goes back to the very beginning, with the establishment of Jamestown, the first permanent English settlement in North America, in 1607.

Virginia’s restaurants mirror its communities, with a wide range of specialties to suit all budgets and abundant seafood from its coastal waterways. The Commonwealth is also home to a thriving wine, beer, and spirits industry.

One of the great draws of Virginia for outdoor enthusiasts is its wide variety of landscapes in a compact geographic area.

Virginia’s cities, counties, and towns represent a wide range of living situations, with a location to support any lifestyle.

VEDP Vice President of Knowledge Work Meghan Welch spoke with Steven Chen, the founder of PFP Cybersecurity, about the cybersecurity funding environment in Virginia.

Candice Ling is a senior vice president at Microsoft and head of the company’s federal government business unit. Previously, she served as the company’s government industry lead in Asia.

Brad Medairy is executive vice president at Booz Allen Hamilton, a Virginia-based Fortune 500 company where he leads the national cyber account and focuses on the cyber missions of national-level clients like the FBI, the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD), the U.S.

Recently, an Air Force research agency reached out to George Mason University (GMU) with a pressing issue. Drones were attacking Air Force facilities around the globe.

Drake Goolsby is chief commercialization officer at Luna Labs, a Charlottesville-based company that helps develop advanced technologies in biotech, advanced materials, and engineered systems for government, military, and industrial clients.

Like his fellow Type 1 diabetics, Alec Smith took insulin every day to regulate his blood sugar.

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.

Prem Natarajan, Ph.D., is chief scientist and head of enterprise AI at Fairfax County-based Capital One Financial Corporation, where he manages technology strategy, architecture, and development for the company’s enterprise data, machine learning, and analytics initiatives.

Karen Dahut is the CEO of Google Public Sector (GPS), where she works to bring Google technology to solve complex problems for U.S. public sector institutions at the local, state, and federal levels.

The global aerospace industry is reinventing itself, with innovation spanning materials, engineering, and a more expansive vision for how we take to the skies. Virginia sits at the heart of this transformation as a breeding ground for ingenuity.

On 462 acres in Albemarle County, a plot of land along U.S. Route 29 adjacent to a federal intelligence hotspot is the latest addition to a growing cluster of industries coming to define the Charlottesville area.

Backed by monumental funding deals, a peaking business profile, and a strong entrepreneurial undercurrent, Virginia is building an accessible, collaborative, and truly thriving innovation ecosystem far and wide across the Commonwealth.