CHARLESTON, W. Va. (WOWK) — Infor held a grand opening at its Downtown Charleston office in Laidley Tower Monday. Infor is a cloud-based software management company based in New York City, employing 17,000 people worldwide. It soon hopes to have 100 people hired locally, most of them from West Virginia.
“We would love to hire locally. For us, we kind of see that folks get trained here and they leave the state. Our goal would be to get folks from universities and schools, keep them working in West Virginia, get them in a happy work environment, where they can stay and not have to leave,” said Pam Murphy, Chief Operating Officer at Infor.
The Infor presence could also boost West Virginia’s efforts to get more your women to pursue jobs in science, technology, engineering, and math – the STEM fields.
“Infor really works with educational institutions whether it’s WVU, whether it’s Marshall and State to prepare the workforce, but we need to get more women in STEM,” said Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, (R-West Virginia).
The Infor announcement was another reminder that West Virginia needs to ramp up its portion of the high-tech sector and improve internet access.
“I mean you have to. Tech center is where the future is going to be. And ith that we have to make sure we are connected. We have to have all the infrastructure in place, broadband high-speed,” said Sen. Joe Manchin, (D-West Virginia).
“You have an open, welcome, diverse community here in the City of Charleston,” said Charleston Mayor Amy Goodwin.
Infor is the largest company of its kind, in the world.
Officials from Infor say one of the reasons they picked Charleston is the relatively low cost of living here, especially for real estate, compared to traditional tech hubs like Silicon Valley and Boston.