Virginia Economic Review

One is a tiny company with its eyes on the heavens: Micro Harmonics pioneered high-tech designs and components with help from NASA.

Mike Coleman is president and CEO of CV International, a Norfolk-based global logistics, freight forwarding, and trade compliance services provider, and Capes Shipping Agencies, a wholly owned subsidiary that provides ship agency, cargo forwarding, and logistics management services to clients.

Lance Harcrow is chief operating officer at Estes Forwarding Worldwide (EFW), a subsidiary of Estes Express Lines and a leading domestic and international freight forwarder headquartered in Chesterfield County.

Dr. Myra Blanco is chief growth officer at the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute (VTTI) and CEO of the university’s Dock to Door Coalition, a partnership of nearly 100 organizations across industry, education, and government that works to develop an integrated approach to modern freight transportation by solving critical supply chain issues.

Ashleigh de la Torre is vice president of public policy at Amazon, where she leads the company’s transportation and sustainability initiatives, supporting its operations, logistics, and delivery businesses across land, air, and sea.

Upgrading Interstate Capacity Along Key Arteries The Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT) is in the midst of a $3.9 billion upgrade to the Hampton Roads Bridge-Tunnel, scheduled to be completed in 2027.

Supply chain management (SCM) and logistics have changed dramatically in the last decade. There’s growing demand for deeper visibility into every step of the supply chain. Automation is playing an ever-larger role in the movement of goods.

Supplier and customer accessibility has always played a key role in industrial site selection decisions. But the supply chain shakeups over the last five years have pushed manufacturers to rethink the types of sites that might allow them to best serve their key stakeholders.

Ask a major importer or exporter what constitutes an optimal air cargo partner for their supply chain, and you’ll hear the usual desired qualities: location, transit time, Foreign Trade Zone incentives, carbon footprint, and even weather.

Real estate developers have dealt with a daunting set of complications in the last few years, from increased borrowing costs to inflation to labor issues. It’s no surprise that developers and site selectors have focused on predictability as they consider supply chain factors in site decisions.

Early in the morning of March 27, a container ship about as tall as the Eiffel Tower left the Port of Baltimore going approximately 9 mph. The ship, named the Dali, was fully loaded with cargo and weighed nearly 100,000 tons.

Maj. Gen. Ted Mercer is the new CEO and executive director of Virginia Space, the owner and operator of the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport (MARS), collocated at the NASA Wallops Flight Facility on Virginia’s Eastern Shore.

COVID-19 has underscored the value of businesses embracing digital technologies in the healthcare space — from telehealth and remote patient monitoring to artificial intelligence (AI) for predictive analytics and diagnostic insights.

In recent years, the increased amount of available data — 64.2 zettabytes (equal to 1 trillion gigabytes) were created globally in 2020, compared to 2 zettabytes in 2010, according to Statista — and ways to analyze and use it have escalated the demand for data science professionals to fill data analyst, business intelligence engineer, and other roles.

E-commerce became the lifeblood of retailers and business-to-business (B2B) suppliers in 2020, yet the innovation that grew out of this need has disrupted industry norms forever. Research from the Retail Industry Leaders Association (RILA) and McKinsey & Co.

After a year of focusing on operations during the COVID-19 pandemic, data center investments are on the rise, with an eye on expanding capacity to meet pandemic-influenced changes in consumer behavior.

Consumers’ increasing demand for safe, sustainable, locally grown food is driving interest and investment in controlled-environment agriculture (CEA).

Across the wireless industry, 5G — the fifth-generation technology standard for broadband cellular networks, meant to deliver higher data speeds, lower latency, more reliability, and higher capacity — has been not just the next big thing, but a family of next big things.