Meet the New York native and proud marshall grad who’s telling Huntington’s story in a new way at HADCO.
By Katherine Pyles, photo by Rick Lee
HQ 135 | AUTUMN 2026
Associated Press award-winning and Emmy-nominated journalist Kaylin Jorge was at home in Nashville when her husband, Dwight, received a phone call from a former employer.
“I’ll never forget it,” Jorge recalled. “He looked at me and said, ‘That was WSAZ with a job offer.’ I said, ‘Well, I’ve never shut the door on West Virginia.’”
That phone call ultimately led Jorge back to Huntington — and, five years later, to the Huntington Area Development Council (HADCO), one of the city’s most influential economic development organizations.
While Jorge isn’t a native of West Virginia, she knows she’s home, she said. Having lived in the state for nearly a decade, her ties run deep, her blood runs Marshall green and she loves the people of Huntington.
Jorge, a native of upstate New York, met Dwight, who’s from Miami, Florida, while they were both studying journalism at Marshall. Even without a car, she made the city work for her, walking across Third Avenue to work at Steel of West Virginia around her class schedule. After graduating, she got her foot in the door at WCHS-TV before accepting a career-defining digital management role in Nashville.
In Tennessee, Jorge cut her teeth in a relentless news market, taking a last-place digital news team to a dominant No. 1. She directed coverage for national stories, like the Christmas Day bombing and downtown tornadoes, and led coverage for over 60 stations across the U.S. at the Daytona 500 and the CMA Awards — even interviewing Dolly Parton.
Still, the West Virginia hills kept calling.
“I think COVID changed the way a lot of people think,” said Jorge, who said she especially missed the close-knit community she’d found in Huntington. “We started asking ourselves what kind of life we wanted to live.”
While exploring options to relocate to the Mountain State, Jorge was introduced to an opening at the West Virginia Chamber of Commerce through one of her Marshall mentors, and the decision came easily. The couple returned to West Virginia in 2021 and chose to put down roots in Huntington.
Back in West Virginia, Jorge hit the ground running at the West Virginia Chamber in Charleston, working her way up from communications manager to chief communications, development and policy officer. During Jorge’s tenure, she overhauled the Chamber’s communication strategy, launched an award-winning website and helped coordinate marquee events like the Annual Meeting & Business Summit and the Women’s Leadership Summit. She also helped shape the Chamber’s policy positions, serving as an advocate for workforce development, childcare and business development.
That work built on her earlier communications roles, as well as lessons from her own upbringing, she said.
“A big part of my story is how I grew up,” Jorge said. “My dad worked construction. I know what a good job means to a family. That’s probably why economic development feels so personal to me — because behind every project we’re working on here are real people whose lives are changed by these opportunities.”
Jorge spent five years at the Chamber before an opportunity presented itself closer to home: David Lieving, HADCO’s longtime president and CEO, was retiring, and the organization was looking for an executive director.
“I loved my time at the Chamber — I got to see what was happening all across West Virginia,” Jorge said. “But this opportunity felt like a chance to bring that experience home and be part of the growth happening in my own backyard. Huntington has given me so much — from my education at Marshall, to the friendships I’ve made, to meeting my husband, to the home we’ve built and the family we’re raising. Being part of this community’s next chapter is just something I’m really committed to doing.”
For more than three decades, HADCO has worked behind the scenes to strengthen Huntington’s economy by attracting new investment and supporting local businesses. As executive director, Jorge will use her background in storytelling and business development to tell the city’s economic story in a new way.
“One of the things I love most about Kaylin and her husband is that neither of them are from Huntington, but they fell in love with Huntington,” HADCO President and CEO C. Toney Stroud said. “They met at Marshall, moved away and came back — because they loved Huntington. People like that can tell a story that those of us who grew up here may not be able to tell.”
He said Jorge’s vision, energy and ability to bring people together make her the ideal candidate “to show the rest of the world why Huntington, West Virginia, is the place you want to be.”
“Our goal is to make sure no parent has to say, ‘My child had to leave Huntington because there were no opportunities,’” said Stroud, who left Huntington in the ’80s for exactly that reason. “And I think we have the blueprint to succeed in that. We have a great education system, a great healthcare system and a loyal workforce. And we’ve got everyone — the mayor, Marshall, the Chamber, HADCO — all rowing their oars in the same direction, all working toward the same goal.”
In addition to her professional expertise and background, there’s another qualification that makes Jorge uniquely suited for the role: she’s a new mother. Jorge and Dwight welcomed their daughter, Juliette, earlier this year.
“Being a new mom has really altered the way I think about this work,” Jorge said. “Yes, we want to attract businesses and investment, but we also need to think about our parks and neighborhoods and schools, and whether families think that this is a place where they can build a life. That’s what economic development should be about — creating places where people want to stay and raise the next generation of Huntingtonians.”
She said she hopes her own journey becomes a familiar one.
“I’m the product of what we’re trying to create,” she said. “I came here, went to Marshall, built a career and bought my first home here — and now, I’m raising my family here. If we can recreate that same opportunity for other people, then we’re doing our job right.”
Katherine Pyles is the managing editor at Huntington Quarterly. She is a 2009 graduate of the W. Page Pitt School of Journalism & Mass Communications at Marshall University, where she was a member of the Society of Yeager Scholars.
