One area company is working hard to bring more jobs back into the greater Washington region.

“Virginia is kind of a donut. It has an economy that’s growing in certain areas, and it has a hole in the middle where some are being left behind,” said Dario Marquez, founder of Wize Solutions, a company dedicated to bringing jobs to parts of Virginia.

There are ample jobs in Virginia, but access to them is low since they’re centralized in specific areas, so they’re not being filled, Marquez says.

“The urban area is creating jobs, but the rural area is needing jobs,” he said.

Wize Solutions hopes to bridge that gap. By reaching out to community colleges, Wize realized that many of the skills needed for these new urban jobs, predominantly in IT and cybersecurity, are being taught in urban areas through two-year programs.

Ostensibly, Wize encourages community colleges to teach certain skills, hires their graduates, and then contracts the graduates to work for urban companies from the rural area they live in.
“We want the students to be there to be part of their community, in fact what we want is for the community to provide the lawyers that service us, provide the management that’s going to service, the accountant that’s going to service,” said Marquez.

The process, Marquez explained, was like outsourcing, but just within Virginia.

“We don’t just want to create 50 jobs. We want to create 500 jobs, and eventually 1,000 jobs. So we had to make sure that we were in an area that had the proper institutions of higher learning, that had the infrastructure to support something like this… and that there was enough supply,” said Marquez. Virginia, it turns out, is a perfect fit.

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