 Good afternoon, everybody, and welcome. It's wonderful to have all of you here with us this afternoon. I'm Susan Collins, the Joan and Sanford Wildein of the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy, and simply honored to be hosting a very, very special event today that is in honor of J. Ira Harris, the J. Ira Harris Lecture, featuring the 38th United States Secretary of Commerce, the Honorable Penny Pritzker. So I'd like to begin by first recognizing some very special people here with us today. Of course, our featured speaker, Secretary Pritzker. Thank you so much for being here. We're delighted to welcome you. Our guest of honor, Mr. J. Ira Harris, who is here as well. We're delighted to have a number of members of the Harris family who are here with us. Mrs. Nikki Harris is here, and their son, John Harris, and his wife, Jennifer, as well as their daughter, Jackie. And so we are delighted to have all of you with us. Michigan's Vice President for Development is here this evening as well. Jerry May, thank you for joining us. Well, today's gathering was made possible by Ira's good friends with a special thanks to Bonnie Tish. Their names are all in your program, and many of them are here with us this evening. They gave a generous gift to Michigan and asked us to host a major event in honor of a special milestone birthday for Ira. The public intellectual nature of their gift really recognizes Ira's curiosity and his passion for education, policy, and leadership. And their gift honors Ira's abiding love for his alma mater. The incredible generosity of Ira and Nikki Harris has really transformed the University of Michigan from the hospital and the medical school to the north of the campus, to the athletic campus in the south, from the College of Engineering to the literature, science, and the arts, the Ross School of Business, the library, the Museum of Art, the Office of Financial Aid, and at the Ford School, Ira, Nikki, and their family created the J. Ira and Nikki Harris family professorship of public policy, which is held by my colleague, Barry Ray, who is also here with us today. They've been incredibly generous with their time and their expertise as well. And for more than 20 years, Ira has been an active member of the University's Investment Advisory Committee, contributing his world-class financial acumen to helping the University maximize the growth of its endowment. And he served for many years on the President's Advisory Group. President Mark Schlissel, who was not able to join us today, has instead sent a formal letter of both gratitude and congratulations. And we look forward to presenting that to Ira during the reception. So on behalf of the University of Michigan, thank you, Ira and Nikki, for your inspiring commitment and your dedication. We really, really appreciate it. Ira, I'd also like to thank you personally for providing me with this opportunity to tell such a distinguished group just a bit about the school that it is my honor to lead. And so before I turn things over to Mr. Harris to introduce our keynote speaker more fully, I'd like to take just a moment or two to tell you about the Ford School. Founded in 1914 as the nation's first program of its kind, we were named in 1999 for the University of Michigan's pride, President Gerald R. Ford. The president's legacy is alive and well at the Ford School, where our students learn about and are inspired by his exemplary career in public service and his lifelong commitment to bridging ideological divides. At its core, the Ford School's mission is improving lives, advancing the human condition. We provide our students with a skill set that's increasingly in demand in a world that, as we all know, is getting smaller and more interconnected, that's changing at breakneck speed and becoming ever more complex. We provide our students with the analytic and creative skills to harness the complexity of the 21st century. Our students learn to analyze complex data sets, to evaluate benefits and costs, to speak and write clearly and persuasively, to think critically and compassionately, recognizing the multiple perspectives, to craft and enact solutions where others may only see dead ends. Well, that's our curriculum. That's the professional toolkit that our students take out into the world. And they find that those tools are as valuable in business and finance and the nonprofit enterprise as they are for the public sector. Our faculty aren't just outstanding teachers. They're also vitally engaged in the real world policy issues at the highest levels. Emeritus Professor Sheldon Danziger, who is also here with us this evening, is one of the nation's foremost experts on poverty and inequality, and he now leads the Russell Sage Foundation, America's principal foundation dedicated to social science research. The expertise of Harris family professor Barry Raib is widely sought by top journalists from around the world. His research and his outrage shape public understanding of climate change and energy, both the politics and the policy. Professor Robert Axelrod's seminal work on game theory made him one of the most cited political scientists ever and the first to be awarded a national medal of science in over 25 years. He now advises the State Department on the threat of cyberterrorism. And Ford School Professor Susan Donarski saw years of research and persuasion come to fruition last year when the Department of Education dramatically shortened the FAFSA form to make it easier for disadvantaged kids to go to college. A first generation college student herself Sue's work also led the University of Michigan to launch the HAIL program, which will enable scores of talented low income students to attend and to succeed at the University of Michigan. Our alumni, they're helping rebuild Detroit. They're leaders in major public school systems, the Department of Defense, Homeland Security, international aid agencies, National Science Foundation, Accenture, and so many more. Those are the stories that's the work of the Ford School. And so on behalf of our faculty, our students, and our staff, and of course of the broader University of Michigan community, I welcome all of you here for this really, truly happy occasion. So in a moment, I will invite Ira to introduce our speaker. After her remarks, there'll be some time for your questions. Please write them on the question cards that you received. And if you will pass them to your right, then staff will be there to gather them for the question and answer session. Now you'll find an overview in your program of the incredibly distinguished, successful career forged by Ira Harris. After decades of prominence in business and finance with leadership roles at Salomon Brothers and Lazard Frayers and Company, he is now the chairman of the financial consulting firm, J. Ira Harris and Associates. In addition to their generosity to the University of Michigan, Ira and Nikki have been active in a wide variety of charitable organizations, including the Chicago Public Library, Northwestern University, the National Center for Learning Disabilities, and many, many more. So please join me now in another round of applause as we welcome our dear friend, J. Ira Harris, to the podium. First, I want to pick on my friend, Bonnie Tish, for doing this, because the truth was the generosity of all my friends to this wonderful cause. I didn't get ties. I didn't get sweaters for my birthday. But I've got to tell you, it couldn't have been anything better than this. And I will tell you, if any of you sat with us back with the students with Penny, the total reward has already been there. She is so phenomenal in talking with our next generation. And they should all know that there is a summer intern program at the Commerce Department. And if you apply, you should write a letter and say, I met you at the Michigan lecture. I just want to take a minute and introduce Bill Daley, my good friend from Chicago, who had been Secretary of Commerce and who has given so much in his life and has just been a really good friend. Eric Canner, our former Majority Leader of Congress, who is now, thank God, in the real world and puts so much back into it. And I've really been very fortunate of having so many friends that have put so much of their time and effort back into the public sector. I do got to tell you all a very funny story about how to do with the creation of the Ford School. I got to know President Ford after he had been president of everything else. And Nicky and I really hit it off when he and his wife and Betty was one of the great women of our time. And when this whole thing started to create the school, I obviously was asked to get involved, which I did. Now, a very major donated to the school whose name is on the building is Sandy Weil, unfortunately, is out in California. So we're now talking about, I'm trying to give you an example of the public private sector, of going to approach Sandy, do a donate. Sandy loved the president. The president had been involved with Sandy for many, many years. So I called Ford on a Saturday and I said, look, we're going to meet. I'm taking Mary Sue in on Tuesday. We're going to meet with Sandy to talk about the school. But I said, you got to call him today to tell him how important this project is to him. So the president says to me, I heard you know, I hate to call people to talk to him, to ask him for anything. So I said to him, look, I want you to turn the clock back about 30 years. Make believe you're in Grand Rapids, running for Congress on a Saturday afternoon, dialing for dollars. This is what you got to do because if you don't call Sandy and tell him it's important, we're not going to get anywhere. Half-hour lady calls me back. He says, I did it. I did it. I think we got him. I said, OK, we'll work on it. So now we meet with Sandy and Sandy had this great love for President Ford, as Jeff Lane here who served on boards with both of them know. And Sandy made a gift of $5 million, which was a terrific gift towards the naming of the building and everything else. So the next thing that happens is about three months later, I get this urgent phone call from Mary Sue Coleman, who is the president of Michigan. She says to me, Ira, I got problems. I said, what's your problem? She says, we got a regents meeting this afternoon. And on the agenda, there was to approve the naming of the school and everything else. And I said, you know, what's the problem? She says, well, Sandy's gift is only 36% of the value of the building because it's run a little bit extra. And some of the regents are very upset that we have this rule in Michigan that the naming gift should be 40%. And they're concerned that we're creating a precedent. So I said to Mary Sue, good. Tell the regents we're creating a precedent. Any building named after an ex-president who's an alumnus of the school, you only got to put up 36% to do it. And I said, see what they do. There wasn't one region, after she said that, that had the guts to say a word. They decided they'd create a new precedent. But Sandy has been really terrific towards this and has named the dean and other things and been great supporters. And I'll tell you, the president was really interested in going on and see this school. And it was one of his accomplishments that he loved very much. About today, I can't tell you how happy I am. I can't tell you how lucky Nikki and I are to have such wonderful friends that we got. I've got two of my three kids here today, which have always made us very proud. And when we got the idea of calling Penny, I called her up on the phone. And I mean, I couldn't even finish the sentence of asking her, would she do this? She said, absolutely. Nikki and I have known Penny since she was a young girl. We have been so proud of watching her emerge all over all these years and to being just one of the most outstanding people that we know. We had the great pleasure of being very close with her mother and father and also after they had both passed away to watch Penny become a mother of bringing up her younger brothers. And this is someone that has constantly done it. Let me just say a few things. She's been 38 Secretary of Commerce since June 2013. She's done an unbelievable job focusing on business. She has very much made her position that she's Switzerland. And her job is just to develop business for the United States and do the best job. The things that she had done have been creative, taking all the experience of the different businesses she's been in and doing this. She's probably met with over 2,000 CEOs. And when she meets with them, she wants to listen. She created this open for business agenda which she talked to our students about today, which has been unbelievable, of really going out and trying to encourage investment back in the United States. She earned her bachelor's degree in economics from Harvard University and a JD and MBA from Stanford University, which you know are both the Michigan's of the east and the west coast. So she didn't want to come to the real Michigan, but she went to the Michigan's of both coaches. All I can tell you is I love her. She's fantastic. I'm so proud of her and I can't thank her enough. Not only did she come and greeted her speech, but when the school called her and asked her would she meet with the students, as you see, we've got 15 students that came in from the school. She said, absolutely. That's who I really want to talk to with the students. So Penny, I love you. I'll always love you. I won her security that I know her for a long time so they didn't get upset when I went to kiss her. I should sit down now. That was the best part of the day. Ira, thank you very much. Dean Collins, thank you as well. And I am really honored to be here tonight. I'm really honored to deliver the first J.I. Ira Harris lecture. It's really extraordinary. Ira, you know this. You are loved. You're respected. You're appreciated by this community for all that you have done on behalf of this great university. Thank you for all the scholarships you and Nicky have created and the professorships that you've endowed. Thank you for the seemingly endless amount of support that you've given to the College of Literature, Science, and Arts, the Stephen Ross School of Business, the Ford School of Public Policy, and of course, the University Athletics Program. There's no question. The two of you mean a great deal to the students, the faculty, and the supporters of the University of Michigan. I'm here today because you mean so much to me. Ladies and gentlemen, Ira Harris has been part of my life since I was born. He was, as he said, close to my mom and dad. Nicky and Ira were very close friends with my mother and father. And you can ask him about the time he put nail polish on my father's feet. And he used to call our house every morning at 6.30 in the morning, waking my mother up, which was never really a good thing to do. We've been close for a very, very long time. So much so that when my husband, Brian, and I decided that we were going to renew our wedding vows for our 25th wedding anniversary, there was only one person we wanted to officiate, and that was Ira. He agreed in a heartbeat. In fact, I think he had to stand up somebody in this room, and I'm not sure who. But thank you for your patience with that. There's one little detail about that day that I'm sure you will appreciate, which is Ira showed up for the occasion, dressed in his full University of Michigan robes with his academic tam on. It was the perfect outfit for officiating at our wedding celebration. I've always relied on Ira for his advice and counsel. His nature is to be, and you all know him as well as I do, is both cautious and analytical without being cynical. When I asked Ira whether I should step out of my business world and accept the honor of being Secretary of Commerce, his natural instincts were on full display. A lot of people were counseling me against it. They worried that after 27 years in the private sector, the bureaucracy and the politics would frustrate me. Ira encouraged me to think it through and asked me a couple of key questions. How would a CEO secretary be uniquely different in the role? How would business experience and skill translate in the public policy arena? How do you lead an agency five years into an administration when you only have three and a half years left? How do you become an integral part of the process, which is well underway, while also putting your own stamp on the place and its priorities? How could we gain bipartisan support for that agenda? Ira asked those questions, and then he encouraged me to take the job. So let me tell you what it's like to step out of your life. I had to resign from everything, every board, every business, and even our own family foundation. It's like going into the witness protection program. So on my first day of work, I sat in the conference room with about 50 people, and they're all staring at me. And these are now my closest colleagues, and I had neither hired them nor had I ever seen them before. And they began rattling off these acronyms, like NTIA, and BIS, and PTO, and ESA, and ITA, and EDA, and NOAA, and NIST, and oh my god. And less than an hour on the job, and I'm a drowning in the proverbial Washington DC alphabet soup. But attached to all those acronyms were some very serious economic policy issues and considerations that I would quickly need to master. And it was really somewhat terrifying. I thought I knew what the Commerce Department did, but I really had no idea of its true depth and breadth. Commerce had 12 different bureaus under its umbrella. And when I say different, I mean really different. It's responsible for everything from the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration to the International Trade Administration to the Patent and Trade Administration to the Census Bureau. So think of it this way. We count both fish and people. We issue both patents and weather warnings. We negotiate trade deals and make sense of big data. In fact, every day, we generate enough data in terabytes to fill two libraries of Congress every single day. So it became clear that the first to be successful in my new role, I had to be all in. So I moved my life to our nation's capital. And it also became clear that I needed to time to develop my priorities and a vision for the department. So I announced that I would take 100 days to accomplish three things. First, we would put the right people in the right jobs. So when I took over as secretary, about 80% of the leadership positions in the office of the secretary, which is about 100 people, were vacant. And 80% of our Senate confirmed positions were also vacant. Second objective in the first 100 days was hearing from our stakeholders. So I went on this listening tour, both within the department, across Capitol Hill and across our country. And third, we had to develop a strategy with a set of priorities. And so during those 100 days, we developed what we call our open for business agenda that continues to drive our work each and every day. The phrase really has two meanings. America's open for business, but also that commerce would be opening new markets and opportunities for American businesses around the world. The agenda has four pillars that encompass every task the Department of Commerce is responsible for, trade and investment, innovation, environment, and data. So this framework gave every bureau in the Department of Commerce the opportunity and the permission to identify where they fit in within the overall plan. It clarified the direction we were headed together and it enabled each bureau to develop individual strategies to meet their specific goals. I also made the decision to position the office, the executive office of the secretary, my senior team and me as the tip of the inverted triangle. I can't do a triangle very well, but think of an inverted triangle. Yes, an inverted pyramid. The way I saw it, we were there to serve the department, not the other way around. And so over the past three years, not quite three years, a couple months short, our open for business agenda has unleashed the creativity, the capacity and the power of the 45,000 people within the 12 bureaus that comprise our department. And together we've begun to transform the Department of Commerce into a true department of business that works with the private sector on policy development, helps firms of all sizes enter new markets and supports the development and expansion of the digital economy. Tonight I'd like to focus for a few minutes on one of the most exciting innovations, commercial diplomacy. Commercial diplomacy uses the power of American business to influence policy in markets around the world. Our world is too complex, our challenges are too deep, and the players too diverse for us to depend solely on traditional military and diplomatic tools. In the modern world, commerce must be part of our foreign policy toolkit. It's the third leg of the national security stool. So for decades, the United States has played a unique leadership role in the world. At the end of World War II, America and its allies built a rules-based international system that promoted openness, creativity, as well as political and economic freedom. From the Marshall Plan to the Berlin Airlift to our intervention in the Balkans, we relied on the unquestioned military, financial, and diplomatic power of our government to strengthen our post-war system. But over the decades, the world has changed and the tools we use to address our foreign policy challenges must change as well. For the first time in history, we are truly a global economy. The size of the global middle class has doubled over the past decade and will double again by 2030. Global networks connect business to business and business to consumers in ways that have never before been possible. It means that every U.S. business has access to literally a world of new customers. So like all great innovations, our vision for commercial diplomacy was sparked by a light bulb moment. It came at a large multilateral meeting three years ago in Asia when a senior Indonesian official approached me with a special request on behalf of his government. The Indonesian government wanted Apple to open a store in Jakarta. And the official asked me to reach out to Tim Cook, the CEO. This was a curious request because the Indonesian government was among the countries trying to implement a data localization policy. So data localization requires the store of user data on server to keep that data on servers physically situated in a country where the data originates. So this Indonesian policy was in direct conflict with the goal of generating a new high-profile investment given Apple's commitment to the cloud. So right then it occurred to us that the voices of American commerce with long-term capital and world-class products and services behind them carry immense weight around the world. So America's top executives could be deployed to make persuasive business cases to foreign officials about how certain public policies might be counterproductive. So we realized that we could make the Tim Cooks of the world great partners in effecting economic policy change around the world. And this is the beginning of commercial diplomacy. Fundamentally, commercial diplomacy brings business leaders to the table as advocates and emissaries in concert with government officials when and where our interests align. Now we at the Department of Commerce are consistently engaging American executives in ways that have never been done before. We ask them to join meetings and policy dialogues and in turn executives with the authority to make multimillion, and in some cases, billion-dollar decisions, detail why certain policies inhibit their investments. Rather than simply telling a foreign leader that a particular policy is bad, we're trying to show them what benefits will flow from pursuing a different policy. This is far more persuasive. And our vision has matured, and we have observed with overlapping interests that they extend beyond US government and the American business community. And often we find that our foreign business community has the same interests that we do. Irrespective of the country, people want economic freedom and the chance to earn a good living, start a business and support a family. Irrespective of the country, foreign governments want American companies to invest in their communities because American firms create jobs, bring leading technologies, respect the rule of law and tend to invest for the long term. Irrespective of the country, foreign citizens want access to American products and services. So interestingly enough, our government and our business community share these objectives. We've come to appreciate that this overlap creates tremendous, but underappreciated opportunity for our private sector and our government to work together as partners in an effort to support and shape a well-functioning rules-based international economic order. So let me spend just a very short moment discussing how commercial diplomacy efforts are playing out in a particularly pivotal place, Ukraine. As we know, Russian aggression in Ukraine has had a significant impact on the Ukrainian economy and its people, with GDP declining 10% over the past two years. International financial institutions, the United States and our European allies have provided important financial support, but the key to a sustainable economic success in Ukraine will be the market's ability to draw private investment. An independent prosperous, democratic and corruption-free Ukraine would be a global triple win. It's good for European stability, it's good for our own national security interests, and it's good for American business. So in September of 2014, President Obama asked me to go to Kyiv. My mission was to meet with President Poroshenko and Prime Minister Yatsenyuk and urge them to focus on critical business climate reforms, like addressing corruption, even while they were fighting a war in the East. I decided to enlist the American business community as partners. My message to the Ukrainian leadership was clear. Without real reform, American businesses would never fully commit to the Ukrainian market. The President and Prime Minister agreed and began to press ahead with an ambitious economic reform agenda. And in fact, within two weeks of our visit, their legislature passed a law establishing the National Anti-Corruption Bureau. The next step in our commercial diplomacy engagement was to convene the first ever U.S.-Ukraine Business Forum during the summer of 2015 in Washington. And Vice President Biden and Prime Minister Yatsenyuk were both in attendance. Before more than 150 Ukrainian and American business executives and government officials, the Prime Minister and Ukraine's economic ministers provided updates on Ukraine's path to economic reform. American business leaders offered concrete recommendations on how to further improve Ukraine's investment climate. They outlined the constructive role they could play in supporting Ukraine's integration into the global economy, a critical step if the country is going to enjoy long-term political stability. In October last year, I returned to Ukraine with a distinguished group of senior U.S. business leaders, whose mission was to make the business case for why Ukraine should adopt a number of particular policies that would draw more trade and generate more investment. Ultimately, the Ukrainian government committed to a roadmap that consists of seven critical microeconomic reforms that were requested by the business leaders. And in the months since, the government has made progress on this roadmap. They've begun developing a plan to address the significant value-added tax refunds they owe companies. They've begun developing an electronic and transparent system for making large government procurements. They've begun to cut back their overly burdensome regulatory regime, and they've implemented a new law that lowers their gas royalty rates to a level that's in line with international practices and encourages investment in natural gas production, which the country desperately needs. So Ukraine continues to face serious economic and political challenges, and their work is far from complete. But I mention this particular engagement as an example of how commercial diplomacy can work. As with traditional diplomacy, success is defined by incremental but meaningful steps along those lines. As I said at the outset, commercial diplomacy is not a traditional tool in our toolkit. But the government and the private sector are literally building new muscles. American executives are not accustomed to framing the cost of often complex economic policy decisions to foreign leaders. They're not trained as ambassadors, but many American executives are patriots and want to help affect policy change that will open more markets to America's businesses and products. But two and a half years of this effort is not enough. We need to push future presidents and their secretaries of commerce to invest in and cultivate this tool. If commercial diplomacy is truly going to become the third leg of the foreign policy stool, and I believe it should, our government needs to develop mechanisms to systematically deploy American executives as emissaries and advocates with foreign governments. And I have no doubt that some may be cynical about this approach, but I don't think Ira would be. So Ira once again, happy birthday, and to the students and community of the University of Michigan, let me close by saying go blue. Well, thank you so much, Secretary Pritzker, for a window into your evolving vision of commercial diplomacy and some of the really exciting work that is underway in the Department of Commerce. I know that a number of you have written questions and in a moment, we will ask some of the questions from the audience, but perhaps I could start our conversation by asking a question or two of my own. And maybe I would start by following up on one of the things that you alluded to at the end of your remarks. And that is that we're in a very difficult, complicated time at the moment. We are in the middle of an election season. There are so many important, complex, and often controversial issues that are still on the table. I wonder if you would highlight for us what you would see as your key priorities for 2016 in your role as the Secretary of Commerce. Well, this year is obviously, it's a year we have an election, but we at the Department are very focused on a few things. First of all, getting the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which is our trade agreement with 11 other countries in the Asia-Pacific region, getting that pass through Congress, and we're working very hard on that, and you'll see a lot more activity as we rev up as Congress is sort of back in session now. The second area that we're focused on is data. As I alluded to or mentioned, we produce an enormous amount of data, some of which is easily usable by the private sector and much of which is not as available as it ought to be. And so we have a huge effort going on within the Department of Commerce to make more and more of our data available. And today, if you think about it, I went down and did this fintech event. And if you think about the financial services industry, whether it's the insurance companies that use our weather data to make risk-based decisioning, or it's financial services companies that use our housing data from census, or our wage data to make decisions about either credit cards or lending, or whether it's just the average business leader who looks at our GDP data to help inform their decision-making. We just have a lot of data that we produce and as the world has become sort of where the value of big data is being appreciated and the ability to use it is much greater given our computing capacity, we need to be in the business of making that much more available as a public good. The third area that we're focused on is the digital economy. There are so many issues that are arising in the digital economy. And I would say the digital economy is the economy if you think about it. We all, in one form or fashion, our businesses rest on a digital base or a digital foundation in one form or fashion, regardless of whether you're in manufacturing, you're in financial services, or you're in even an artistic business. So we're very focused on policy around keeping a free and open internet globally and that is not something that to be taken for granted. There are enormous forces around the world trying to limit that. The second is we're trying to deal with the intersection of privacy and security. So for example, we just have finished negotiating the new EU-US privacy shield, which is the update to what used to be the US-EU safe harbor, where about $260 billion of trade every year depends upon having that mechanism in place. We're focused on access, but still 25% of households in America do not have access to high speed broadband and access becomes critical not only for those families to have access to information and education and the ability to explore the world from your laptop or desktop, but also for companies that wanna be selling their products. And then finally, we work with new technologies to help them and to better understand what's necessary at the intersection of innovation of new technologies, whether it's autonomous vehicles, whether it's fintech, regardless of the area. So those are the areas where we're focused. And finally, we've made for the Department of Commerce a skilled workforce of priority and really institutionalizing that as something that we're focused on. So lots to do this year. That's a quite important agenda. Absolutely. Excuse me for one sec. Thank you. I have to say as the Dean of the School of Public Policy, your focus on data and helping members of the community, business, and others, and I hear some of our alums and our students enjoy the comment. I mean, it's so important. And so we very much appreciate that. So now let me go to questions from the audience. The first one is after speaking about using U.S. commerce to support friendly countries, how do you see this strategy being used in the Middle East, specifically Egypt and Saudi Arabia? Well, if you think about one of the biggest problems that most economies face is creating jobs. And so take Egypt or Saudi Arabia. They have both countries have significant youth populations that are not employed or are underemployed. And part of what we can do is work with those countries to help bring new businesses, innovation, entrepreneurship to those countries. In fact, I did a round table in Saudi Arabia of entrepreneurs, half of which were women. And I would forgive my French, but they really kicked ass. It was really, it was pretty amazing what they're doing in their country, even though there are obviously limitations on what women can do. So it's a huge opportunity for us to work with those countries. Obviously you need to have security first in order to be able to have greater engagement. Well, actually this next question is a nice follow up to that. How is the Department of Commerce promoting and encouraging equal pay for women and minorities in the private sector? Should government action on this policy issue be more forceful? Or does the private sector need support and more time? Probably all of the above. I think that the government needs to continue to put pressure on the private sector to have greater diversity in our workforce and in our leadership. And if you look at the demographics of our country and who's the deciders, I think that the number, 72% of purchasing decisions in the United States are made by women and around the world of the $18 trillion that's spent a year, $12 trillion of those decisions are made by women. Why wouldn't you want women in your leadership knowing that? So, and the same is true for diversity among your leadership team. The United States demographics are changing and why wouldn't you want your leadership team to have much greater diversity so that you have greater insights into all markets? And, but the job is bigger than just the Department of Commerce. This really goes, frankly, I would throw it back at you and say this takes leadership also in the academic institutions to make sure that we're training our entire population. I mean, just to think of what would happen if we actually as a country had trained all our talent but we don't do that. And I don't mean everyone needs, forgive me, a college degree. There's enormous opportunity in technical training and frankly in some respects we need to make sure that we invest more in technical training in this country so that a young person has the capacity to go maybe from high school into a career as opposed to needing a college degree. Now maybe it means you go high school into community college training into a career but there's enormous opportunity for young people there and it's a lot less expensive and you can build into the middle class that way. So there's just a lot that we need to be doing in terms of training. But for sure, the government needs to lead and one of the things I've found in this job is there's a lot more diversity. There are a lot more women in leadership in government than there are in the private sector and it's been quite a pleasure to actually work in that environment. And so again, another area where there are many roles for partnerships across the different sectors. Here in New York, one of the great centers of commerce in the world, great prosperity has also come with great inequality. Access to ideas, resources and opportunities for upward mobility is increasingly out of reach for a growing percentage of the population. How do you see the Department of Commerce playing a role in addressing these challenges and how can the department create the conditions to allow more people to succeed? And again, I think that you have already started to address this one in your previous remarks. Yeah, I think that, you know, let me tell you a little bit just about, we promote this and this is not a direct answer to the question, but I'll give you just an example of one of the things we're doing. Manufacturing, there is a growing need for people to go into manufacturing in the United States. Manufacturing, I mean, it's going through a bit of a dip now but not pretty modest relative to what it went through in 2009, but we've grown about 900,000 manufacturing jobs in the United States over the last five years. And we have a scarcity of a skilled workforce for those jobs. Those are technical jobs. It's not your father's manufacturing. Most of this is digital work. And we need to, so we do, and the problem is the reputation of manufacturing really took a dive over the last 30 years. So families are not encouraging their young people to go into manufacturing, even though there are great middle class careers in that field and in that sector. And so what we did is create this thing called Manufacturing Day. And now we had last October, I think, over 2,500 companies opened their doors to the local community, to young people, school age children, but more importantly to their counselors and to their parents so that you could see what is manufacturing look like. And the point is that there's got to be more paths to the middle class and that comes with training and it means we also have to change our conception that every high school has to be only training you to go to college. There are great, there are other paths that can lead you ultimately to a BA or ultimate, if that's what you need to do your career. But when you meet the young people who have gone through technical schools and then gone through to get certificates either at their local community college or through other training organizations, ending up in manufacturing and then progressing themselves through their careers, they're finding themselves in their early 30s, they own a home, they own a car, they don't have any debt, school debt and their careers are blossoming. We need to be doing more of that. This question has more of a global focus and I actually believe it's true that you are the Commerce Secretary who has visited the most countries internationally. Behind Bill Daley. What challenges have you faced at the Commerce Department as the global middle class grows exponentially and you mentioned that in your remarks, how does that translate into challenges after the Commerce Department? So one of the biggest challenges that countries face is they're trying to encourage innovation, they're trying to encourage growth of industry within their own countries. So what they do then is their reaction is okay, I'm either gonna put up walls so that nobody else can come into our country or through creating market barriers or what they're gonna do is they're gonna require data localization or localization, that significant portion of a product be made within their country. That can work in some instances but from the most part it doesn't work globally as a way to grow and so we spend a lot of time working with countries to explain to them that a supply chain is not something you can just instantly put up within a country and also that all technologies cannot be realized in all countries that needs a certain kind of workforce. So we spend a lot of time advocating for policies that make markets more open and more accessible and the Trans-Pacific Partnership is really evidence of that. I mean if you take a country like Vietnam, Vietnam and Malaysia, Malaysia not only has signed the Trans-Pacific Partnership, they have ratified it. They ratified it before they signed it, that's pretty amazing. Wish our Congress would do that. Anyway, but these are countries that recognize that in order to be part of the 21st century trading ecosystem they're going to have to improve their labor standards, their environmental standards. They need to make their markets more open for digital products. They need to create digital backbone that makes their countries attractive for investors to invest in their countries and so that's the kind of places where we're working. That's why this agreement is absolutely critical to get passed. Another reason for it is if we don't set the standards for trade in the Asia-Pacific region, China will and then we're going to have a race to the bottom in terms of the conditions for trade. If you think about Trans-Pacific Partnership, it will lower 18,000 tariffs, it will eliminate actually 18,000 tariffs on for American goods and services sold to be sold around the Asia-Pacific region through the TPP, just the 11 TPP countries. And it will also make goods more affordable here in the United States because it lowers tariffs here in the United States. So it's a big benefit and those are the kinds of places where we're trying to make a difference and create more access, both through agreements as well as working one-on-one with countries. Thank you. Unfortunately, this will be our last question and I think it will be of great interest to at least 15 members of our audience and perhaps others who are watching as well. The question is, so you mentioned summer internship opportunities and the real question though is what recommendations do you have for students, students of public policy or others who are excited about the kinds of opportunities that you're talking about? We have incredible internship opportunities at the Department of Commerce so I would encourage you, you can go online, you could talk to my staff who's here, I don't know where's Marni's here, Lauren's here, right here, just go talk to them, get their cards and send them your resume and apply for an internship. And we need talent and what I would say is and the thing about government is as a young, my observation is a young person, you get to do, you get more responsibility as a young person in government than you do in a lot of other organizations so it's a great experience and I highly encourage you to do that. I would also encourage if you're thinking of a career in government, also get some private sector experience and bring that to the table in your career path. And one of the amazing things about careers today is careers are no longer you go to work for one company and stay there for your entire life. And so I would both, if you're thinking of, if you're in the school of public policy and you're thinking you want a long-term career in government, I'd make sure I had some private sector exposure so that you have credibility so that your judgment about policy is better informed. Wonderful, well thank you so much. Thank you Secretary Pritzker, that was fabulous. We also really appreciated the time that you spent earlier with our students. Please join me in a final round of applause for Secretary Pritzker. I'd also like to thank the generous donors to the J. Ira Harris Lecture Fund. Thank you so much, many of you are here and we very much appreciate that as well. And last but absolutely not least, a huge maze and blue thank you to Ira Harris. Ira, thank you for all that you do for us. Thank you all for joining us as well. I'd like to invite you to join us just through those doors in the kitchen and gallery for a reception. So again, thank you and please join us through those doors.