I fear my faith has overtaken my journalistic sense this month. If ye are of little faith, then please pardon the fact that what follows is more sermon than editorial. The December edition features a public service announcement created by the excellent message crafters at Creative Energy on behalf of the RegionAHEAD organization. You may have seen the heart-rending videos RegionAHEAD has produced featuring ...

Click here to download the December 2020 Edition ...

By Dave Ongie If you’re looking for silver lining around the dark cloud that is the COVID-19 pandemic, one was clearly visible on Thursday morning at BrightRidge headquarters. Members of BrightRidge’s leadership gathered along with elected officials and other local leaders to announce a giant leap forward in access to high-speed Internet service in Washington County. As of Thursday, 28 high-speed free Publi ...

Above: eHealth Technologies CEO Jeff Markin Rochester, N.Y.-based eHealth Technologies, Inc., a provider of medical record and image retrieval and clinical intelligence services, will invest $375,000 to establish a new customer support center in Scott County, Va. At a Thursday morning virtual press conference, the company said it will create 160 new jobs in the next five years. The company assists clinical ...

Above: Washington County, TN Mayor Joe Grandy FILE PHOTO Washington County, Tenn., Mayor Joe Grandy told a committee of the county commission Dec. 2 that a hub organization designed to improve and grow the region’s economy is, “probably within weeks of being established.” That statement represents significant progress in a relatively short period of time for Grandy, Sullivan County Mayor Richard Venable, an ...

Ballad Health COVID response leaders, fearing the continued dramatic rise in COVID cases will strain the health system’s capacity to the breaking point, Wednesday announced several actions designed to ready Ballad for what Chairman and CEO Alan Levine called, “what we believe could be the worst-case scenario.” Among the actions: • Ballad has obtained a second refrigerated truck to serve as overflow morgue s ...

Above: Joshua and Chris Harman, Photo by Earl Neikirk) SPIG Industry, LLC, a Washington County, Va.-based manufacturer of highway guardrail end terminals, will invest just shy of $8 million to expand its operations in the Bristol-Washington County Industrial Park. The company will build three production plants and a welding shop, as well as a new rail spur line to serve the facility. SPIG chose Virginia aft ...

Above: Delegate Will Morefield sponsored legislation to clear the way for the facility Pure Salmon, an aquaculture company based in Abu Dhabi, plans to build what it calls the world’s largest vertically-integrated indoor aquaculture facility near Southwest Virginia Community College, with completion expected by the end of 2023. The Boards of Supervisors of Russell, Buchanan and Tazewell counties made the jo ...

Ballad Health’s Jamie Swift has the not-terribly-surprising roadmap through COVID for your business by Scott Robertson For most Americans, the idea of a pandemic striking during our lifetime seemed only a remote possibility before the COVID crisis. Not so for Jamie Swift, who started her career as a communicable disease nurse and served as director of Communicable and Environmental Disease Services with the ...

Leton Harding As chairman-elect of the Virginia Bankers Association (VBA) for 2020-2021, Leton Harding, president, chairman and CEO of Powell Valley National Bank, is acutely aware of the issues facing both the banking community and the customers and clients of banks. After hearing Harding discussing the plight of small businesspeople who feel they’re being punished for following the rules regarding Small B ...