Dr. Tamarah Holmes: Tamarah Holmes, Ph.D., is the director for the Office of Broadband at DHCD and has been in the role since September 2019. She has spent over 20 years in the public sector in the field of community and economic development in New York, New Jersey, and Chesterfield, Virginia. Dr. Holmes has played an instrumental role in the creation of the Virginia Telecommunication Initiative (VATI), leading the development of the program that has grown from a $1 million to a $750 million appropriation since 2017. She is responsible for coordinating efforts across the Commonwealth to invest an additional $1.48 Billion in federal funds from the Broadband, Equity, Access and Deployment (BEAD) program and $18 million in Digital Equity State Capacity program allocated under the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law to close the digital divide. In addition to serving as director, she serves as the Virginia Appalachian Regional Commission (ARC) program manager, overseeing ARC's economic and community development programming in 25 counties and 8 independent cities in the Appalachian region of Virginia.