Virginia Economic Review

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.

When Jeremy Moyer was 6 years old, he started following his dad around their 1,000-acre dairy farm in Amelia County. By the time he was 12, he was getting paid to do chores around the farm. Now, at 42, he runs the farm with his father and brother.

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

Speed and efficiency are essential competitive edges for any manufacturing operation. Yet the growing adoption of advanced manufacturing techniques isn’t just boosting efficiency with how goods are produced — it’s changing the types of goods that can be made and where they are produced.

Speed and efficiency are essential competitive edges for any manufacturing operation. Yet the growing adoption of advanced manufacturing techniques isn’t just boosting efficiency with how goods are produced — it’s changing the types of goods that can be made and where they are produced.

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.

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.

John Newby is CEO of Virginia Bio, the nonprofit statewide trade association that serves and promotes the life sciences industry in the Commonwealth.

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.

Beth Macy is a three-time New York Times-bestselling author. She is the author of “Factory Man,” “Truevine,” and “Dopesick,” books that tell separate stories, but all stories through which the challenges, issues, prospects, and hopes of rural America are studied in different ways.

Tom Barkin is the president and chief executive officer of the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond. Barkin joined the Richmond Fed in January 2018. In his time in Richmond, Barkin has taken an interest in the issues leading to a divide between urban and rural areas in the Fed’s Fifth District.

Luiz DaSilva is executive director of the Commonwealth Cyber Initiative (CCI) and Bradley Professor in Cybersecurity at Virginia Tech. Before coming to Virginia, he served as the director of CONNECT, a telecommunications research center at Trinity College Dublin.

Virginia's Surging Craft Beverage Industry Virginia's first brush with alcoholic beverage production came in 1620, when English settler George Thorpe distilled the first batch of corn whiskey in what would become the United States at the Jamestown settlement near Williamsburg.

Dale Nash is CEO and executive director of Virginia Space, the owner and operator of the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport (MARS), at Wallops Island on Virginia's Eastern Shore.