On Oct. 31, 2024, Chris Lloyd, McGuireWoods Consulting’s vice president and director of infrastructure and economic development, was cited in Virginia Business’s cover story, “Virginia is for HQs: Commonwealth Attracts Major Companies.”
The article notes that Virginia has been highly successful in attracting headquarters for major corporations, with 24 Fortune 500 companies headquartered in the state. Four of these firms have relocated to Virginia since 2020. Additionally, Amazon opened an East Coast headquarters in June 2023 in Arlington’s National Landing. McGuireWoods Consulting assisted several of the companies mentioned in the article, including Hilton and CoStar, with their respective headquarter relocations to commonwealth in recent years.
Lloyd highlighted Virginia Tech’s Talent Investment Program, which was instrumental in attracting Amazon to the state and aims to produce 31,000 computer science and related graduates over the next two decades. He emphasized that the program demonstrates Virginia’s commitment to a long-term strategy for success: “I think that showed that Virginia wasn’t just in it for the short term, but that we were going to build this 20-year pipeline of tech talent and obviously everything else associated with that. … Instead of thinking short term, we thought long term, and leading companies are recognizing that.”
The value of hosting corporate headquarters goes beyond the positions created by those companies; it also drives demand for supporting professional services. Lloyd noted that “you need to have large law firms and large accounting firms and large ad firms and all the clusters around you.”
McGuireWoods Consulting played a pivotal role in the development of the Virginia Tech Talent Investment Program through its work with higher education institutions and business communities throughout the state.
