Culpeper County Department of Economic Development Named Economic Development Organization of the Year by the International Economic Development Council

Culpeper, Virginia — August 20 — The Culpeper County Department of Economic Development has been named Economic Development Organization (EDO) of the Year (for populations of 25,000-200,000) by the International Economic Development Council (IEDC) — the world’s largest economic development organization. The EDO of the Year award recognizes organizations that demonstrate organizational excellence, innovative programs, meaningful community impact, and an exceptional commitment to the people and businesses they serve. Bryan Rothamel and Winona Pritts will accept the award at the IEDC Annual Conference in New Orleans in October.

A Record of National Recognition
The EDO of the Year award caps what has been an extraordinary period of national recognition for Culpeper County Economic Development.

In 2025, the department received six IEDC Excellence in Economic Development Awards, the most received by any single organization in the world that year. In 2026, the department received five awards — again among the most of any organization worldwide. The department also earned nominations for IEDC’s Best in Show recognition in both 2024 and 2025, an award that identifies up to 14 of the top individual economic development projects globally. The EDO of the Year award represents the pinnacle of that recognition.

“Incredibly impressive what a small office and two people can accomplish. I can’t imagine the planning, juggling of tasks, and hard work it takes to execute everything this department does.” — IEDC Judge

“Economic development works best when it operates at every level of a community simultaneously. The vision for the department has been to build something that serves Culpeper County completely, not selectively. This recognition reflects what’s possible for rural economic development.” – Bryan Rothamel, Director

A Department Transformed
Five years ago, the Culpeper County Department of Economic Development functioned as a traditional economic development office, focused soley on business attraction and large businesses. Today, it operates four distinct program ecosystems spanning: small business development, agricultural economic development, workforce development, and business attraction. Each focus has been built from scratch, grounded in community relationships, and designed to meet real and identified local needs. Those ecosystems encompass:

• Be A Culpeper Local, a full small business development engine that includes an annual nine-day shop-local celebration, a half-day business summit, a recognition reception, a monthly workshop series, a finance cohort, business spotlights, and a small business newsletter.
• Choose Culpeper Farms, which supports Culpeper’s agriculture through an award-winning website, an annual farm tour, a craft beverage trail, farm spotlights, and agricultural business education.
• Work in Culpeper, a workforce development ecosystem connecting employers and job seekers, delivering free workforce training, and building a career pipeline that reaches students from middle school through graduation.
• Choose Culpeper, anchoring the business attraction efforts that have brought more than $20 billion in anticipated capital investment to the Culpeper Technology Zone.

“Thrive at Work and Financial Foundations for Growth are both interesting concepts — I have not heard of programs like this before. I am beyond impressed that a two-person team has created and implemented so many unique and successful programs.” — IEDC Judge

“Every program we’ve built started with a conversation — with a business owner, a farmer, an employer. We listened first and built second, and that approach made all the difference. Thrive at Work exists because employers told us what their teams needed. Financial Foundations for Growth exists because business owners asked for something deeper. We just showed up, listened, and built. Being recognized for that is humbling in the best possible way.” – Winona Pritts, Assistant Director

What the Department Has Built

Be A Culpeper Local — Small Business Development
The department’s reintroduction of ‘Be A Culpeper Local’ and the building of a small business ecosystem began in 2022, with a single shop-local celebration with 26 participating businesses. Today, it is a full development engine that includes:

• • Be A Culpeper Local Week, an annual, community-wide celebration of Culpeper’s small businesses that in 2025 engaged 71 businesses, recorded more than 6,100 transactions, and generated over $340,000 in local economic impact. A celebration video filmed during the event earned more than 10,000 organic views in a county of 55,000.

“Tremendous impact on the community from this duo. Love the Be a Culpeper Local Week initiative and the strong participation.” — IEDC Judge

• The Culpeper County Conference (C3), an annual half-day small business summit that has served approximately 125 businesses and entrepreneurs across three events.
  The Culpeper Business Appreciation Reception (CBAR), provides an opportunity for the department to thank Culpeper business owners for calling Culpeper their home. The 2026 event recognized businesses celebrating anniversaries during this calendar year.
• Facts & Snacks, a monthly small business workshop series launched in July 2024 that’s delivered 24 workshops to 147 in-person attendees, with session recordings available online.
• Financial Foundations for Growth, a custom four-week finance cohort developed entirely in-house in direct response to business feedback, launched in June 2026 with its first cohort of six participants. Through guided instruction, practical tools, and hands-on support, participants gain a clearer understanding of their financials and walk away with actionable strategies they can immediately apply to their business.
• Small Business Spotlights, collaborative written by department staff and the business owners, this free marking opportunity is published on the department website and social media and shared with the local newspapers. The impact has been tangible: the department’s very first featured business, Banks Graphic Design, grew from a two-person team to six employees within a year of their spotlight being published.

“The Business Spotlight Program has provided my business with nothing short of crucial benefits that have compounded interest,” said the owner of Banks Graphic Design. “Even a year after the initial article was published, magazines have reached out to us for a feature, referencing the Business Spotlight. I cannot stress enough how drastic the contrast has been between the minor effort invested on my part compared to the rewards this program has granted me.”

A department newsletter reaching 509 subscribers rounds out a small business communication ecosystem that keeps Culpeper’s entrepreneurs informed, connected, and supported year-round.

“What sets their work apart is how thoughtfully each program is tailored to the feedback and evolving needs of our local businesses. Our businesses know they have a dedicated advocate in Economic Development — one that supports their growth and success while working to strengthen our local economy.” — Amy Frazier, President & CEO, Culpeper Chamber of Commerce

Choose Culpeper Farms — Agricultural Economic Development
Choose Culpeper Farms launched in February 2023 with a flagship website that connects residents with agriculture. The award-winning website features farm directories, fresh product sourcing, and an agricultural events calendar as well as farm spotlights, agriculture focused community organizations, and resources for farms. Choose Culpeper Farms has since hosted an agricultural business education workshop focused on estate and succession planning for farm families, treating farms as the small businesses they are.
Choose Culpeper Farms repositioned the county’s annual Farm Tour from an agri-tourism event into a resident-centered agricultural economic development program, deliberately connecting Culpeper neighbors to the farms in their own community rather than only attracting outside visitors.

The program also includes the Sips of Culpeper beverage exploration trail (launched in 2024), which transitioned to a fully digital platform in 2026 for improved visitor experience and real-time engagement data.

Work in Culpeper — Workforce Development
Work in Culpeper launched in April 2024 as a job platform connecting Culpeper employers directly with job seekers. Phase 1 of the platform was designed with students in mind, built from conversations with the school system about the disconnect between students looking for work and local businesses looking to hire.

That school system partnership quickly grew into something much larger. The department provides Work in Culpeper folders to students who attend the CCPS job fair, giving graduating students a tangible, branded resource for their job search — a program that has served 600 students across the 2024-25 and 2025-26 school years.

The department also sponsors Mock Interviews through Career Partners Inc., a nonprofit connecting Culpeper’s businesses, schools, and community — engaging the more than 600 juniors in CCPS each year.

In March 2026, the department helped coordinate Manufacturing & Construction Day, bringing 50 middle school students to tour local employers, participate in several tasks hands-on, and connect with industries they might pursue as careers. The program was built specifically for students who had identified an interest in technical education. A second Manufacturing & Construction Day is already being planned for October 2026.

“The partnership between our school division and the Department of Economic Development is exceptional and has proven to be a powerful force in advancing workforce development in our community. Bryan and Winona consistently go above and beyond, investing their most valuable resource: their time. Their commitment to students is genuine, visible, and deeply appreciated. Because of this strong partnership, Culpeper continues to demonstrate that it is an outstanding place to live, work, and grow a skilled workforce.” — Randi Richards-Lutz, Director of Career & Technical Education, Culpeper County Public Schools

Building on those employer relationships, the department launched SkillUp Culpeper in February 2026 — a workforce training initiative delivering two programs free of charge to Culpeper businesses:

The Emerging Leaders Series, developed in partnership with Germanna Community College, is a custom two-session supervisory training program designed specifically for Culpeper employers. The first cohort enrolled 20 employees from five businesses — at capacity, with a waitlist.

The Thrive at Work Series is a four-week, activity-based program focused on communication, teamwork, problem-solving, and professionalism, and concludes with a formal certification that employers can use in performance documentation and promotion decisions. This fully bespoke program features activity handouts, flashcards, and slide decks, and a certification assessment created by department staff. The first cohort enrolled 15 employees from five businesses — also at capacity, with a waitlist.

The SkillUp Culpeper program also received an individual award from IEDC as a Workforce initiative. One of the judges shared:

“This is a unique program, and to think that everything was created in-house by one to two people is amazing. I like how this targets very specific gaps identified during business visits. It is an innovative idea.”

Choose Culpeper — Business Attraction
What makes the Culpeper Tech Zone distinctive is not simply the scale of investment it has attracted — it is how Director Bryan Rothamel has approached it.
Rather than treating each data center project as a standalone attraction win, Bryan has built the CTZ as its own economic ecosystem. Every incoming project is engaged on local vendor hiring, industrial space for supporting businesses, off-site logistics, workforce transportation, and active partnership with the Culpeper Technical Education Center. Data center businesses have visited CTEC classrooms, provided materials for students who were building a working mock data center, participated in skills showcases, and hired directly from school programs. In 2026 alone, 60 Culpeper County Public School graduates secured positions with data-center-related companies—jobs that did not exist in the community just two years ago.

This designated 1,000-acre corridor represents just 0.4% of the county’s total land area, but this approach has created a self-reinforcing pipeline where the county’s largest construction projects are simultaneously building its future workforce.

Eight data center campuses are now in development, with one campus having completed its first building and a second breaking ground in 2025. Anticipated capital investment exceeds $20 billion across more than nine million square feet of construction, with projected annual tax revenues of $150 million by 2031. These construction sites have become Culpeper’s largest private, non-retail employers, with construction activity expected to continue into the next decade.

“Very impressive business attraction and data center attraction success. CTZ seems like an interesting idea and model.” — IEDC Judge

Recognition

The department’s full slate of 2026 IEDC Excellence in Economic Development Awards, all to be presented at the October conference in New Orleans, includes:

• Gold — Economic Development Organization of the Year
• Gold — Talent Development & Retention (SkillUp Culpeper)
• Gold — Innovation in Economic Development Week
• Silver — Special Event (Be A Culpeper Local Week)
• Bronze — Print Brochure (Culpeper Harvest Days Farm Tour)

The department is deeply grateful to the community partners, businesses, farms, students, and organizations whose trust, collaboration, and participation have made this work — and this recognition — possible.

“What distinguishes the department is not simply the number of initiatives they provide, but the thoughtful and intentional way they approach community needs. They actively engage businesses, gather feedback, identify emerging challenges, and create meaningful solutions that are responsive to those needs. We view Culpeper as a strong example of what can be accomplished when economic development efforts are proactive, collaborative, and community-driven.” — Rosi Beachy, Central Virginia Small Business Development Center

The Culpeper County Department of Economic Development serves Culpeper County, Virginia with a mission to strengthen the local economy through business attraction, small business development, agricultural economic development, and workforce development. Learn more at chooseculpeper.com.