 Good morning. Thanks everyone for being here. I'm Reed Kramer. I direct the asset building program at New America and our program focuses on an array of issues related to economic security and mobility and in this work we've been paying pretty close attention to the impacts of the great recession and it really became clear to us that the recession has had a particularly severe impact on young adults. So along with our co-conveners, Young Invincibles and the Roosevelt Campus Network, I'd like to welcome you here to this cross-cutting policy symposium entitled Millennials Rising, Next Generation Policies in the Wake of the Great Recession. And our goal is really to convene an evidence-based discussion that looks at the new realities that millennial Americans are facing and then explore a public policy response. So we're very much looking forward to the exchange with all of you over the next day and a half. At the onset here I want to just acknowledge a lot of colleagues and collaborators and staff that have worked on organizing this gathering. My new America colleagues have been great. Rachel Black, Elliot Shure, Holly Russon Gilman, Lauren Ellen McCain, and Leanna Simmons have just been invaluable. Leanna did a great job with this space. Very happy to be here, aiming for something a little offbeat here in the DC policy world. So I think we maybe hit the mark. And then at Young Invincibles, Jennifer Wang and Jen Michori, Loryo Sullivan have been great and Taylor Joe Eisenberg at the Roosevelt Campus Network. Taylor, are you here? Okay, hi, thank you. We've actually only met over the phone and email. So great to have her here. The initial idea for the convening was hatched by New America in collaboration with Ray Becherra, who works at a center, runs the center on household financial stability at the St. Louis Fed. And it was their work that explored the dynamics of the family balance sheet that really revealed a lot of the severity of the impacts on younger families. And their research showed that the great recession really wasn't your garden variety economic downturn. The economy lost almost nine million jobs. The unemployment rate hit postwar highs, along with the long-term unemployment rate that remains elevated. Household wealth dropped almost or over 16 trillion dollars from its peak. And even if we might have expected some of this loss of wealth to occur when the bursting of the asset bubble, the recovery has certainly been slow and very disappointing. There's really been no return to normal for many families, many individuals. And there really is a generational component to this story. Millennials are having a difficult time gaining their footing in the economy. They're now on a very different trajectory than previous generations, with greater obstacles in accessing some of the basic building blocks of success, or what previously had been the building blocks of success, getting the right education, finding the right job, raising a family, managing finances, even participating politically. So the conceit of this gathering was that there seems to be little recognition to the millennial generation experience, to the unique circumstances that they're facing, and we've really been left with a big disconnect between their experience and the public policy response. So our intention is to really examine this gap and explore a new set of policies that meet both the moment and also the aspirations of members of this generation. I also want to acknowledge there are a lot of limitations in using a generational framework. There is a huge diversity of experience that's out there. There's also maybe some art to it, as opposed to some of the science and some of the rigor. So I want to acknowledge that, and we can talk about that throughout the session here. But I think there's also some advantages. And there is a prevailing worldview that might be emerging, shaped by a shared experience, including the attitudes of parents that were responsible for raising the generation. Some noted generational scholars such as Neil Howell and William Strauss, were very early in identifying this new phenomenon of the millennial generation. In their 2000 book called Millennials Rising, where we got the name for the symposium, and they called this a good news revolution because the children that they were observing about to head off to adulthood to college were actually inclined to behave a lot better than their predecessors were. They were really breaking the mold of disillusioned youth. They were committed to building up new social institutions rather than tearing down old ones. They weren't seen as selfish and narcissistic, like the boomers, or profane and risk-taking on the edge like the Gen Xers. And there's some Gen Xers in the audience too, right? Okay. So they were seen as cohesive. They were seen as hopeful. They were comfortable as team players. They wanted to participate. They wanted to engage. Everyone was rewarded for showing up. Everyone got a trophy just for participating. And according to Howell, and that wasn't the case when I was a kid. Only the winning team got a trophy. Anyway, Millennials, the sunny disposition that emerged was a product of a larger society that was feeling better about having children. Children were sought after. They were wanted. And then they were looked after too. This is the advent of the helicopter parent. The parent was ready to swoop in at a moment's notice. So they weren't ignored. They were people invested in them. And as a result, Millennials grew up not trying to kind of question authority. They respected authority. They wanted to know what the rules were. They were tolerant. They were accepting of differences. They were achievement oriented. And anyway, these are some of the generalizations they're thrown out about the generation based on some of the survey work of the day. Interestingly, their experience with technology was unique. They grew up, every generation grows up with technology, but this one was connecting people in new ways and presenting kind of a frontier which seemed a lot, they were like boundless possibilities. The future was bright. And as I said, I think there's some challenges in these generalizations, but they don't cover the diversity of experience that I somehow think we want to capture. But it did possibly explain the birth boom, the pro-child sentiment explains the birth boom that has made the Millennials the largest cohort in the country. And if we look at anyone born between 1982 and 2002, Millennials are 85 million strong. Demographically, they're the most diverse generation in American history, racially and ethnically. They've been influenced by the wave of Hispanic and Asian immigration. So I think it's around 43% of millennial adults are non-white now. So that's the largest of any generation. And they're so diverse that the concept of a typical American is really going to lose its meaning if it already hasn't done so. And I think this is significant because all subsequent policy conversations are going to have to acknowledge the multiculturalism and the diversity of America now. And I think Millennials are on the forefront of this recognition. So today, Millennials are now supposed to be entering the kind of prime of their working lives, approaching their family-forming years, but really they're lagging behind previous cohorts. We've had a weak recovery. It's exacerbated inequalities. And it's created pervasive conditions that are fostering a downward mobility rather than broadly shared prosperity. The job market's been historically bad. Jobs that are offered are going to be flexible and don't provide the same kind of stability. So the road to adulthood has gotten much more arduous. People are redefining their aspirations. They're reordering their priorities. And it's complicating many life decisions, such as marriage, children, even home buying. So there's the paradox here. They might have greater discretion in choices they make, but they have fewer options given their constrained economic prospects. And this is the context for the failure to launch phenomenon. But really the future is not written. And interestingly, Millennials reign optimistic about what lies ahead. They have a positive outlook that endures. And they're still looking for new pathways to progress. And in this search, that's where there's a role for policy. The current policy is not doing enough to support people's choices, to help them participate in the economy, to help young families move up the economic ladder. And at this point, you know, millennial policy is going to be family policy. We're going to have to think about how this works across generations. What's at stake here is whether or not the American institutions, whether they're in government or in the private sector, can respond to the unique circumstances of the millennial generation and do so in ways that are supportive and recognize their aspirations, their attitudes, their opinions about the world around them. And we know they support a stronger government. They're open to government when it's helping people, when it's leveling the playing field, when it's providing services, when it's improving the economy. But will they be able to coalesce around a far-reaching agenda that can reverse declining mobility, can support them in their family choices, and can cultivate their resiliency? In a few years, they're going to be the overwhelming majority of adults in the workforce. In 10 years, they'll be, I think, 75% of the U.S. workforce. But 2025 might be too long to wait. And we need to think about how to act now. Millennials are no longer just kids. I keep telling people when we talk about this work, they're older than you think, but they are still our future. So in the, what we're going to do together with your help and engagement, we're going to provide a means to kind of dig a little deeper into some of these phenomenon and the issues affecting millennials. A lot of things are treated in isolation. We're going to try to make some connections across policy areas. We've distributed a booklet that's in your packet that has a lot of background materials, trends, data. We're inviting feedback on that material on those papers. So we'll be able to kind of package them with some other policy ideas that we're also going to be soliciting from you afterwards. We're going to send out an email asking for your policy recommendations and ideas in 500 words or less. And we're going to kind of put this together with some of the discussion that we've had, what we'll have here over the next day and a half. So my hope is that the symposium will be able to incubate an advance set of cross cutting policy solutions that can improve the lives of millennials today and in the future. We want to thank all of you here for being here and a lot of our sponsors as well. Our colleagues are very grateful to the City Foundation, who's really been a key supporter of this gathering. It really made it happen. And additional support has been provided by the Annie Casey Foundation, the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, and the Kaufman Foundation. And we appreciate their support. So now I want to bring up Randy McHale to the podium. She's the Chief Operating Officer at the City Foundation. Her work in support has been invaluable. I'll just say, Randy's been a long time supporter of this work. She's not just a funder. She's a real leader, a thought leader in the inclusive financial services space, the asset building space. She's going to lead a panel later today. But thank you, Randy. Thank you so much. Thank you, everybody. So when Reed first approached us about a potential collaboration around this topic, we at the City Foundation actually jumped the chance to participate. First, because we actually know of no better organization than New America for bringing people together and sparking really interesting conversations. And we were also excited about the idea of being able to partner with two organizations, two additional organizations that are really at the forefront of youth issues that we hadn't worked with before. They've actually done a great job, not just lining up a diverse set of partners, but really working together. And I know that Reed highlighted some of the staff, but I really just want to stop and again acknowledge and thank the people that made today happen. So thank you very much. So as Reed said, we want to capitalize on all of what you bring to the table today. This isn't kind of a little podium with us speaking at you. This is a chance to have a dialogue and have a dialogue that's kind of solutions focused, not just talk for the sake of talking, but let's kind of figure out what's the call to action here. And in particular, sort of where does this lead us in terms of our work on policy development? For those of you who, for whom this may be the first time you're at a New America event, I'm going to actually take the liberty of giving you permission and actually urge all of you that we don't want today to be simply an academic conversation, and that's fine. We need to root what we do actually in data and real credible information. But what would be really a failure today is if we have a polite conversation. So like let's not be polite, let's actually, if you're thinking something, if you disagree with something, let's, that's the kind of dialogue that we want to have today. We want to push back on our assumptions. We want to fuel the debate. And as I said, we want to inspire action. And action piece is hard. You know, I'll just share with you as I don't know how many of you are familiar with the work of the city foundation, but last year we took a step back to assess our own work in the U.S. and asked ourselves, that is the world adapts to the trends of globalization, urbanization, digitization? Is our philanthropic approach keeping pace always still relevant? And you know, I'm proud to say that this, you know, asking ourselves this question did not result in our actually, you know, spending several years kind of analyzing what we should do. But it did cause us to question whether or not we were emphasizing the right roots to financial success, which has for us has been really focused on increasing post-secondary degree attainment, promoting home ownership, and helping individuals adopt positive behaviors that help lead to reduced levels of debt and an increase in short and long-term savings. We're not throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Okay? We still believe that those roots are really important and they are important paths. But we also recognize, I think the key kind of aha moment was, was that for prior generations, it was almost like a staircase. That each of these milestones as you met them, you sort of achieved another level and then you work to get to the next level and to get to the next level. And what we're seeing is that for millennials, it's not a staircase. It's actually a meandering path. And you know, you could say, is that the most efficient and the quickest way for us to get there? I don't know. But I will tell you, I think it's probably way more interesting of a process. And what we really want to do is to support millennials by illuminating that path and eliminating obstacles that may stand in their way. I'll just one quick snippet as a result of our inquiry. We did just recently launch a new three-year campaign called Pathways to Progress, which is to prepare 100,000 young people across 10 cities to succeed in a 21st century workforce and make sure that they are prepared and ready and able to secure jobs. We're focusing on four pieces of this path or there could be four paths on this journey, really helping to harness and cultivate an entrepreneurial mindset, leadership and civic engagement, mentorship and meaningful first jobs. And you know, I want to pick up on something that Reed said. When we launched this campaign, it was born out of the recognition that the future actually isn't necessarily so bleak in food with bad news for millennials. And in fact, as Reed started to tell us, millennials probably may have more going for them than the prior generation. So let me just build on a couple points that you made, Reed. First, millennials are actually more risk-averse. Since the 1990s, personal risk-taking has plummeted, violent crime is down, drinking and smoking rates are down. And contrary to the popular stereotype, it actually appears that millennials are really trying to avoid economic risks. And again, contrary to the popular stereotype, millennials are not all sitting in coffee shops and developing apps and trying to figure out how to get super rich off of apps. Instead, they actually think that job and financial security is important. And I think that Reed started us on a conversation, and I want to have us keep in mind, it's financial security, not financial excess. And having it all, but having it responsibly and thinking about the greater good is something that I think is really defining for this generation. And as a result, what we're seeing in the financial services industry is that millennials are much less likely to have credit card, auto, and housing debt than Gen Xers were a decade ago. The other piece is that while the popular media often highlights the millennial who never leaves home, the flip side of this story actually think is a really good one that we haven't really begun to unpack, which is that millennials have much stronger social ties to their families and are creating their own economic and social safety net, one that the public sector cannot provide on its own. And while we know about the high cost of student debt, let's not forget that millennials are attaining high school and college degrees at a higher rate than any other generation. And if we can promote policies and interventions that allow millennials to do this in the four-year time frame that it should take, this can actually be a very productive use of debt that can catapult you to a whole the next economic level. And then I will reiterate what Reed said. You know, maybe the most important thing is that millennials are optimistic. There's something to be said for believing in your future. That's an extremely powerful thing. It's sort of at the heart of the idea of economic and social empowerment is that you believe you have the ability to make something happen. So you're going to hear a lot of competing data points today. I'm hoping there will be a point counterpoint and people who are much better skilled than I am at presenting real data and trend analysis. So I'm just going to sum up my on-chair observations by reminding us, and I will give you my disclaimer. I am a proud card-carrying member of the Gen X generation. So keep in mind that if the generation that came before all of you were basically walking around drunk, broke, less educated, completely emotionally damaged because I never talked to their parents, and basically miserable and extremely pessimistic, I would say that maybe being an optimistic entrepreneurial, tech-savvy, emotionally grounded, yet financially conservative millennial isn't actually such a bad thing. So to all you millennials, we love you. We love that you love yourselves. And so over the two days, let's start to uncover these trends and dig into them because we really need to know more so we can have smarter policies and even stronger positive outcomes. So thanks to all of you and let me turn it back to Reid.