Virginia Economic Review

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.

Shannon Kellogg is vice president of public policy at Amazon, where he leads the company’s public policy efforts in support of Amazon Web Services (AWS).

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.

With 30 military bases, Virginia is among the states with the highest share of active duty troops relative to state residents.

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.

Imagine an apartment building. The lobby entrance, residential door, and parking deck are all accessed and opened via a phone app. The resident takes their laptop to the pool and it automatically connects with Wi-Fi.

Artificial Intelligence may seem like a new technology, but CarMax has been using it for years. The Goochland County-based company is the country’s largest seller of used cars.

Educational institutions across Virginia are finding innovative ways to work with businesses to provide a pipeline of potential employees while also creating better employment outcomes for the students they serve.

Many high school students feel compelled to get a four-year college degree, even if that’s not always the best option. Students may not realize that careers in the trades are in demand and pay well.

Expertise in grapevine grafting and propagation, basic tractor repair, fermentation, and wine racking aren’t exactly skill sets that are widely found among the general population. Yet they are skills upon which the more than 800 wineries, breweries, cideries, and distilleries in Virginia depend.

As the COVID-19 pandemic raged on over the last two years, contractors became more popular as people reevaluated the spaces where they lived (and suddenly worked).

Cyberattacks that can drain bank accounts and steal personal data are high on the list of things that keep Virginia business owners and government officials up at night. A University of Maryland study found that hackers launch cyberattacks every 39 seconds. The good news?

Before opening its Westmoreland Workforce Training Center (WWTC) in 2018, Rappahannock Community College (RCC) held welding courses in the evening in borrowed space at Northern Neck Technical Center that a local high school used during the day.

The Virginia Tech Transportation Institute’s (VTTI) labs allow students to tackle much more than just class assignments. The space is also used for projects that help transportation industry members and government agencies advance vehicle design, safety, and other research efforts.

A major IT firm sees an emerging need for young employees with the right skill sets. Schools, in turn, are filled with students who would need such jobs within a few short years. Through a United Way initiative, the various entities are linked.