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The Mailroom: Day of reckoning
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In December, Virginia Business kindly published my letter calling for bipartisan cooperation to seek solutions to key issues facing the commonwealth — COVID, preparing our future workforce, universal broadband and providing better public safety services. I also said business leaders must demand that those seeking political office in 2021 should articulate how they will rise
A moment for change
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Growing up in 1960s and ’70s Virginia, racism was always present, in forms direct and subtle. Each experience carried a message: to “know your place” and stay there. During my years as a student at Dinwiddie County High School, I remember being in the crowd when we hosted majority-Black Petersburg High School for a football
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5 ways Va. can put people back to work and transform higher education
Common-sense policy reforms and investments in community colleges will support economic recovery efforts
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It’s tempting these days to believe that once COVID-19 is contained, the U.S. economy will bounce back quickly, replenishing jobs and incomes lost in the pandemic. Yet there are early warning signs that when the labor market fully reopens, some high-demand jobs may be hard to fill even with millions of Americans looking for work.
Let’s make business cool again
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Back in my high school days, I recall longing to be one of the “cool kids.” Guys with names like Matt or Jim. This was a time of jocks and cheerleaders. I wasn’t great at sports, but I liked cheerleaders. I tried following in my older brother’s footsteps by being a yearbook photographer. Maybe I
The Mailroom
A time for unity
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Thanks for inviting me to participate in the 2020 Virginia Business Political Roundtable. It was a very stimulating and thought-provoking discussion. One loud message came through following the Nov. 3 election — America is a nation divided. The results showed that the path forward must address that divide, or we will never achieve the unity
OurView: How did it get so late so soon?
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On the subject of time, the much-beloved children’s book author Dr. Seuss once wrote, “How did it get so late so soon?” With December here, that’s an almost perfect description of 2020. How did it get so late, so soon? Most of the past 8 to 9 months have been characterized by an almost immutable
Walking around
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Back in 1982, Tom Peters and Robert Waterman Jr. co-authored a business book titled, “In Search of Excellence: Lessons from America’s Best-Run Companies.” Among many topics popularized by this bestseller was a concept called “management by walking around.” This wasn’t an entirely new idea. It was practiced in the 1970s at Hewlett-Packard and had roots
The Mailroom
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A deserving legend Congratulations on the Virginia 500 Power List issue. It is thorough and very well-researched. It will be on lots of people’s desks. You in my opinion picked the appropriate person to lead off the living legends section. Bill Goodwin has been incredibly successful and generous. I have had the pleasure of representing
Privacy matters
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That unintended consequences come with innovation should be no surprise. Today, technology and social media are global cultural obsessions with a tremendous impact on business. Not that long ago, who would have thought a wallet-sized object like a smart phone would replace nearly every piece of office equipment — telephones, typewriters, copiers, cameras and, to
Big accomplishments
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The motto of Huntington Ingalls Industries Inc. (HII) is “Hard Stuff, Done Right.” That easily fits the work of HII, parent company of Newport News Shipbuilding, Virginia’s largest industrial employer. Its projects — including the construction of U.S. Navy submarines and aircraft carriers — are huge, require complex engineering and are vital to our national