Virginia Economic Review

BWX Technologies, Inc., started out as a boiler manufacturer.

Since Drake Extrusion opened a plant in Southern Virginia to make polypropylene fibers and yarns 31 years ago, the company weathered the collapse of the region’s traditional industry and global downturns and never laid off a worker.

Brent Ward likes challenging projects. As a co-founder of design firm Riggs Ward, his job is to help bring stories to life, through displays of artifacts, graphics, soundscapes, and interactive digital media.

For more than 300 years, Virginia’s universities have helped produce generations of political leaders, scientists, entrepreneurs, engineers, and business executives who shaped the economy in the Commonwealth and beyond.

Alexandria is known for Old Town’s historic shops and homes that are as inviting as they are immaculately preserved.

Virginia has a long history as a site where revolutions can take root. In recent decades, that revolutionary spirit has attracted entrepreneurs and startups who see Virginia as a place where new ideas grow into powerful energy disruptors.

It’s not exaggerating to say that Virginia has been part of the internet since day one. The Commonwealth’s proximity to the federal government in Washington, D.C., makes it a natural place to deploy new technology. In Northern Virginia, network connectivity traces its roots to the U.S.

In the months leading up to July 1776, the Second Continental Congress entrusted a Virginian, Thomas Jefferson, to draft the formal document declaring the colonies’ independence from Great Britain. The 13 British colonies in mainland North America had disparate interests and cultures.

Christy Coleman is the executive director of the Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation, an educational Virginia state agency that offers programs and resources about early American history through its living history museums, Jamestown Settlement and the American Revolution Museum at Yorktown.

From fourth-generation oyster farms to award-winning distilleries, Virginia’s food and beverage trails offer a bounty for hungry travelers. Here’s how some of those businesses have benefited from being on these trails.

Dr. René Rodgers is head curator at the Birthplace of Country Music Museum in Bristol, where she leads the museum’s collections, permanent and special exhibits, and other educational programming.

As U.S. Route 58 winds west along the southern border of Virginia into the Blue Ridge Mountains, the road takes on another name — drawing on the distinctive music for which southwestern Virginia is known.

Virginia Offers Challenge and Respite as Midpoint for Thru-Hikers It happens every spring and fall in Virginia. In the south, on the Tennessee border, they come just as the dogwoods bloom.

Philip D’Anieri is a lecturer in urban and regional planning at the University of Michigan’s Taubman College of Architecture & Urban Planning, where he teaches courses on the built environment.

To propel its growth in Virginia, Harris Healthcare is forging partnerships internationally. “A big part of our strategy is to grow in our current international markets, but also expand into new markets,” said Jeremy Trabucco, executive vice president at Harris Healthcare, based in Herndon.

Steven Brint is a distinguished professor of sociology and public policy at the University of California, Riverside, and the author of “Two Cheers for Higher Education.”

Northern Virginia has long been known as the data center capital of the world, owing to its status as one of the original four Network Access Points (NAP).

Tad Deriso is president and CEO of Mid-Atlantic Broadband Communities Corporation (MBC), a South Boston-based 501(c)(4) nonprofit organization that has built an advanced open-access fiber optic network in Southern Virginia.