Fresh breezes.

Although analytical tools and computer modeling have become exponentially more sophisticated in recent years, one element of decision-making has not changed. Decisions of great magnitude must be made by CEOs and leaders of organizations, not by machines or by the people who prepare briefing documents.

Lou Wallace, Board of Supervisors chairperson for Russell County, Va., is pushing for counties in the coal fields to diversify their economies. She’s been promoting the beauty of the area’s rivers and mountains for recreation and tourism. Her family relied on coal for generations.

“We’re very proud to be an energy-producing community,” she says when asked about the new solar farms being built on abandoned coal mines. “This is helping us to reimagine how we produce the energy. So we’re still able to say we’re keeping the lights on somewhere.”

“We are very much an odd couple. I was like, ‘I don’t see any way we are gonna see eye to eye on anything,’ letting my own stupid bias almost get in the way, but it ended up that he has this vision of flipping the narrative of Appalachia as well,” Milton explains. “His father had coal mines and [Kevin is] investing in the land by having this beautiful growing property and wonderful agriculture. This is what Appalachia really should be seen for.” The more the two talked, the more Milton realized how closely their values aligned. “We are the same person on two sides of an aisle." 

Nearly 200 companies in Southwest Virginia have the potential to play a role in the growing offshore wind industry, a regional analysis has found.

Figuring out whether they’re interested – and whether the existing workforce can support that kind of pivot – is a crucial next step for Project Veer, an effort launched late last year to investigate whether Southwest Virginia should try to stake a claim in the industry sector that supports offshore wind energy.

Between 2010 and 2019, the tech sector grew by 47% and added more than 1.2 million jobs—nearly triple the growth of the economy as a whole. Not even COVID-19 could stymie this growth; although the sector’s expansion slowed during the initial pandemic-related lockdowns, it managed net positive growth through almost all of the crisis. … Numerous smaller quality-of-life meccas and college towns also seemed to add tech jobs sharply during the initial year of the pandemic. Among the former, high-amenity or vacation towns such as Santa Barbara, Calif., Barnstable, Mass., Gulfport-Biloxi, Miss., Pensacola, Fla., and Salisbury, Md. all saw their tech employment surge by 6% or more. Likewise, attractive and convenient college towns such as Boulder, Colo., Lincoln, Neb., Tallahassee, Fla., Charlottesville, Va., and Ithaca, N.Y. all grew their tech jobs by more than 3% during the first year of the pandemic.

David lives on the edge – consciously and deliberately so. But there’s a method behind the edge, one that he embraces with zeal and replicates in those he mentors. It’s also a method that others in any discipline can follow. The sky you see may not be full of shark-mouthed clouds, but David believes these steps can create new kinds of possibility wherever they get deployed.

Did you know Italian-Americans often have Americanized nicknames to prevent Americans from butchering their beautiful pronunciation? No, that doesn’t mean you have permission to call me Tony.