 Today, it is really an honor to be introducing Broderick Johnson, who joins us as part of the university's month-long Martin Luther King Jr. Symposium. And so in that context as well, it's really a special pleasure to have all of you here with us for today's policy talks. Broderick is Assistant to President Obama, White House Cabinet Secretary, and Chair of the President's My Brother's Keeper Task Force. I suspect that some of you are a little curious to know about just what a Cabinet Secretary does. Well, just briefly, Thurgood Marshall Jr. was the first person to hold this important position under President Clinton. And as you'll hear more about a little bit later today, Broderick Johnson in that role is the primary liaison between President Obama and the many Cabinet departments and agencies. So during his lecture, I'm sure he'll share quite a bit more about that with us and also about the interagency federal policy process. So much to look forward to. Many in the audience may be quite familiar with My Brother's Keeper, which is President Obama's challenge to cities across the country to address the disparity in opportunities for men of color. Detroit took that challenge head-on. In fact, one of the Ford School's alumni, Ebony Wells, was a huge part of setting up Detroit's response. And I've heard from our guests that Detroit is really developing a particularly strong program in that context. And so Ebony, I wanted to invite you to stand so we could recognize you. Thank you. Well, before chairing the My Brother's Keeper Task Force, Broderick was an assistant in the Clinton administration, and he previously served as Chief Democratic Counsel in Congress. He's also been very successful in the private sector. He was a Vice President at AT&T and Bell South Corporations, a partner with a large international law firm. And in addition, he co-founded a strategic consulting business. So those who know Broderick may know only parts of his very distinguished and varied career, but I suspect that all of them know where he studied law and his great pride in being a University of Michigan alum. Go blue. So before I turn the floor over to him, I just want to say a word about our format. Our special guest will speak for about 20 minutes, and then we will open things up to the audience for questions. About 10 minutes from now, our staff will be circulating to collect your question cards. You should have received them as you came into the auditorium today. And if you're watching online, please tweet your questions using the hashtag policy talks. Then Professor Ann Lin, Ford School Professor with two Ford School students, Tabitha Bentley and Eric Riley, will facilitate our question and answer session. So time to get started. Please join me in welcoming Broderick Johnson to the podium. Good afternoon. I'm going to try to sit in my book here without hitting a delete button on these screens here. So if I do, I'm sorry. Well, it's great to be here in Ann Arbor. It's great to be back on this beautiful campus. When you're in Washington all the time and you get a chance to go out to a campus like this one and you feel the sense of energy, the excitement, the youthfulness, it warms the heart. And back in DC, by the way, though, you should all should know my West Wing office is filled with Michigan paraphernalia to remind me of this place. But also so that I can strike up conversations with people who come and visit and they're like, you went to Michigan and then about a half an hour later, we finally have stopped talking about the University of Michigan. So it's all over the place and I'm quite proud to have it there. I have really appreciated not only having gone to the school and graduated from the great law school, but many, many important moments in my own life, which I'll get to in a few minutes. But suffice it to say, this place has had an enormous impact on my life and my career. I've got maize and blue running in my veins. When I hear the fight song, I sometimes get kind of teary-eyed, depending on what the score is when the fight song comes on. When I think of Michigan, though, I think about many, many things. I think about President Ford and stories of how he stood up against segregation when he was on the football team here in the 1930s. I think about fellow alums and dear friends from the law school, like former Senator and then former Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, who was my first-year mentor here at the law school. He was a third-year student who kept encouraging me and telling me that if I studied just a little bit harder, I'd make law review and that whatever happened, life was going to be good. I think about my dear friend Valerie Jarrett, who is also a graduate of law school, senior advisor and longtime friend of the president and first lady. I think of great games in the big house over many seasons with law school friends of more than 30 decades. I also think about Lee Bollinger, who was my first amendment professor back in 1982, and he became dean of the law school and president of the university. And as you all know, he stood relentlessly in defense of affirmative action. And I think of my friend and president of the Alumni Association, Steve Grafton, a white dude from Mississippi, who navigated a largely white Alumni Association board to take an overwhelming position supporting affirmative action and opposing prop two. Then there are a lot of very personal moments for me, very poignant family moments, which I'm going to share a bit with you all because Michigan has become a true legacy for my family. I think of my late mom, who became a huge Wolverine fan, had not attended college, but she adopted the University of Michigan really as her alma mater. We would spend many afternoons, phone calls back and forth about the Michigan game. She'd call me and say, did you see that? Did you see that mistake? Did you see that great play? I'd say, mom, the game's still on. Why don't you call me in a few minutes? And one afternoon in 2011, I was able to bring her here to the big house for the first time in her life with my youngest son at the time. And it was cold, and thank you very much. It was cold, but it was really warm for us to be there and to share that moment. My mother was decked out in maize and blue literally from head to toe. I also think about my late father, who set foot on a law school campus for the first time in his life in 1983 for my graduation. And I probably put that moment in the context of fulfillment of many of the dreams that my dad had about what would happen for his sons, his daughters, his grandchildren. And I became really the epitome of the bridge for that, for a generation. You see, when my youngest son came to visit the law school in 2011, he was only 10 years old. His father first set foot on a law school campus when he was 50. So the idea that his grandson at 10 would go to a law school campus was really quite a fulfillment of his dreams. And I remember really, really vividly my son asking me after I'd brought him through a tour of the law school at 10 years old, the idea of visiting a law school late at night on a Saturday night wasn't the coolest thing. But he was intrigued by all of it. And I remember he asked me, he said, Dad, if I decide to come to school at Michigan, if I decide to come to school at Michigan, do you think I could maybe qualify? It was clear in his mind. Maybe it's because of all the investment in his education so far that he could come to school here if he decided to. And that would be a choice that he would have and not some far-off dream that it would take many, many civil rights movements to change. And then when I think of Michigan, I think about my wife, Michelle Norris, formerly with National Public Radio, who was invited to give the commencement speech at this university in the winter of 2014. She received an honorary doctorate that day and she closed her inspiring remarks with a bit of maize and blue poetry. And she said, it's great to be a Michigan Wolverine and the crowd broke out in great applause and I'm glad I told her she should do that because it was the icing on the cake to what was really otherwise quite a memorable day. Thank you very much, Dean Collins, for your most kind introduction and for having me back here. And you know how much I love this place. So Michael Barr is here as well. So Michael and I go back to the Clinton administration and do we have a secret between us about a job he took that I didn't take that he did a great job at and I'm glad he did because it helped to save Washington, D.C. But I'm really surprised that my friend Sally Gindi is here. So a little bit of history. I was in between undergrad and grad school. I didn't know what I wanted to do except continue to study philosophy. So there was a program in Bowling Green, Ohio, a master's program and something called Applied Philosophy. Have any of you applied for that program? Okay. So the best thing about it is that it led people like Sally and I decided that Applied Philosophy would best be applied if we went to law school and became lawyers. So I can't remember the last time I've seen you, but it is so great to see you. And we decided on Ann Arbor because we came up here one weekend and the football team was playing and it was like, I got to go to school there. So Sally, it's great to see you. Love you and it's really wonderful to see you. It's an incredible honor and privilege to be here with all of you to bring greetings on behalf of the 44th president of the United States, President Barack Obama. The president has visited the University of Michigan more than any other sitting president. Sometimes he pokes fun at me though about my Wolverine passion. I don't know why, but he gets it. I remember back in the spring of 2014 the president visited this campus a lot long after the basketball team had gone as far as making the elite eight. The president had not picked the University of Michigan basketball team to go that far in his brackets and notice a big deal made about the president's bracket every year, but he hadn't picked the Wolverines and so then he had to come here and he stood before a pretty raucous crowd that included several of that year's overachievers like Jordan Morgan and Glenn Robinson and Nick Stauskas. The president manned up and admitted his misjudgment about the team. He also admitted that his bracket quote was a mess. Those are his words. Now we're talking about a president about a man who makes very few mistakes in sports, politics or government, but he said he learned his lesson and he would never, never choose against the University of Michigan again. One of my jobs as cabinet secretary is to make sure that as long as we're there he does not make that mistake again. Working in the White House is really the hardest job, particularly this time that I've ever had a cabinet secretary job. Some people would describe it as hurting cats. Michael, you know better than I would never describe it as hurting cats. I say this in all sincerity, there are great members of the president's cabinet throughout. It's great to work with them, but we do have often surreal challenges, unexpected crises that come, trying to get things done with a Congress that oftentimes has a lot of challenges working within itself. But I get to work with some of the hardest working people and smartest people on the face of the planet. That being said, there are many improbable and remarkable moments for me. For example, being able to travel with the president and first lady when they went to Selma last March and to cross the Edmund Pettus Bridge with them. Being in the East Room of the White House a few weeks ago when the president lost executive actions on guns and watching him get as emotional as I've ever seen the president that day. Briefing the president in the Oval Office along with other advisors and you look around and you say, I'm in the Oval Office and I'm briefing the president and I have to say something very intelligent. And then about, I don't know, maybe two months ago, three months ago during the football season I ushered Coach Harbaugh into the Oval Office. This was a Monday after the Michigan State Game and Coach Harbaugh had already agreed to come to DC to do something with the first lady, but the president wanted to actually meet with Coach Harbaugh that day and so watching the rapport between them was really quite something. They even talked a bit about Harbaugh's khakis. I have to admit that the president did not ask Coach Harbaugh, hey, where can I get some of those slacks? But it was really quite a conversation. There was some similarities between the two of them that are quite positive. Now, you all did invite me to share a host of personal anecdotes and stories about my life here and I got a lot more. So in the Q&A, if you want to ask for some more, I'll give you some more, but let's talk about what I do for the president and why it is so rewarding and so incredibly consequential. As was mentioned, I have two primary roles at the White House. I serve as the president's cabinet secretary and I serve as the chair of my brother's keeper task force. I'll talk about both of those a little bit and how they indeed intersect actually. Then I'll look forward to having a conversation with all of you and your questions and suggestions I'll look forward to. I was asked to join the senior team at the White House in February of 2014, this White House then. But it's been my privilege to have known Barack Obama since 2003 when he was a U.S. Senate candidate to have helped advise him in that race, in his presidential race the first time, in his reelection campaign during his two successful terms as president. I should also add that it's been my distinct honor to get to know the president as a friend. He's quite a human being. When I got the call in late 2013, it would have been the professional mistake of my life bar none if I had said no thank you, Mr. President. I can't even imagine saying that, but some people do, but I didn't and it's a good thing that I didn't because again it's hard, but it's incredibly rewarding. The institution of the cabinet is as old as our democracy. Article 2, Section 2 of the Constitution states that the president, quote, may require the opinion of the principal officer in each of the executive departments upon any subject relating to the duties of their respective offices, close quote. Today's cabinet includes the heads of 15 departments, everyone from the Secretary of State to the Attorney General to secretaries of relatively recently established departments, such as Department of Homeland Security. The cabinet also includes the heads of agencies that have been extended cabinet rank, like the EPA and the Small Business Administration. The cabinet secretary wears many hats. Here she serves as a senior advisor to the president, sort of part of the board of directors of the president. Here she serves as a liaison for cabinet members, being the eyes and ears of the president and vice versa to the cabinet. Here she coordinates among various departments and agencies' efforts around the many, many policy programs of those departments. And here she works with cabinet members on implementation and communication of the president's agenda. The president regularly engages with his cabinet. The team that I have in the White House coordinates much of that with me. We have formal cabinet sessions that are held nearly every quarter. You all have seen some of the press around those. You see the president's in the cabinet room and what do we call a pull spray will come in. This is either video or still press. The president will have some remarks at the top, maybe about the subject of the day that he wants to get out and have the press carry. Of course, members of the press try to ask the president questions. They yell questions at him and they're ushered out of the room pretty quickly at that point. I recall my first cabinet meeting. It was in May of 2014 and I'd asked people who'd been there throughout the administration whether I should be prepared to answer any questions to address any issues. In the cabinet meeting, they all said no. It never happened in the history of the republic. You all know what happened. The president turned to me at one point and said, Broderick, would you present this subject to the cabinet? I was like, what happened here? This is not supposed to happen. I said it to myself. I was like, yes, Mr. President, of course. And then I have no idea what I said at that point. In addition to formal cabinet meetings, however, during my time as cabinet secretary, we've actually adopted various new approaches to engaging the cabinet with the president. For example, there are department-specific briefings that focus on updates, challenges, and related actions. These are specific one-on-one engagements between the president and the relevant cabinet secretaries. We also have smaller group meetings that will be based on issue areas. For example, we have a trade cabinet. We have a climate cabinet. These are informal cabinet designations of groups, but they get together and they have done that throughout the time I've been in this White House. President Obama has always been very clear in his guidance to all of us, including his cabinet, that we have to anticipate challenges, proactively address them, and be candid in observing how departments will stay on track to meet the priorities and objectives. This president is a leader who digs deep into substance. It's like he has a highlighter in his head. You can give him a 30-page memo, and you would think he'd get lost somewhere in all of it because there's so much information. He has so little time because he has so much stuff to read. And yet it's like, and Michael can attest to this, it's like he goes right to the subject or right to the question at the very moment when it needs to be asked. And you just sort of sit there and say, this man is unbelievably smart. I've seen it time and time again. He hates small talk and happy talk. So don't be the cabinet secretary that comes in and says, Mr. President, everything's great. We're doing just fine if it's not. If it is, that's great, but it better be. But he doesn't believe that people should airbrush the challenges that they face. The President's cabinet is focused on implementation of his priorities in a time that we have remaining in the next 11 months, policy priorities, but also management priorities and rule makings. And quite honestly, we don't expect to get a whole lot done with the Congress. That's not the top of our list of expectations. Although an exception for that will be around criminal justice reform. And we are quite optimistic about being able to get a criminal justice reform bill to the President that he can sign and that he leads, leaves office. This President believes that today's challenges require multifaceted, holistic solutions by the executive branch. So the cabinet embodies that approach in a number of ways. Let me share a couple of cross-agency collaboration examples. Two weeks ago, as you all know, the President visited Detroit to talk about the resurgence of that great American city. And in case anyone has forgotten, when we inherited the White House when the President took office in 2009, a crisis on Wall Street had plunged this nation into a great recession and the effects were being felt certainly in Detroit. And throughout, communities deeply connected to the auto industry. So in addition to actions the President took to support the American car manufacturers to indeed to bet on their resurgence, he directed his entire cabinet to support the recovery of Detroit. Again, the question had been whether or not Detroit would survive. So in a comprehensive fashion, this is what happened. These are just some of the examples. The Department of Treasury certainly reached out to provide capital and state and local finance to the city of Detroit. The Department of Transportation awarded grants to support new buses so that folks in Detroit could get to and from work. The Department of Energy helped install or finance new LED lights that bring security to a community where there were many people who were worried about their safety, of course, while also saving money and reducing carbon footprint. And as I said, I was with the President on his trip to Detroit. And look, not to sugarcoat things, we know there are challenges that still remain in the city of Detroit, especially around education. But Detroit without question is on its way back and the President has directed the cabinet to remain President in Detroit and to continue to invest in Detroit and look for ways to continue to make change happen in the city of Detroit. Climate change. The end of 2015 saw one of the most consequential moments of this President's legacy, and that being the historic agreement coming out of the UN-led COP 21 negotiations in Paris. There were many people who said that was just not going to happen, that we were not going to be able to achieve much in Paris. Again, the President directed that his whole staff get involved in a tightly coordinated, this whole cabinet get involved in a tightly coordinated approach. For example, for the EPA promulgating rules on clean power and clean water, for the Department of the Interior Conservation of American Lands and Endangered Species, for the Department of Energy Standards and Renewable Energy Standards, for the Departments of Transportation and Agriculture, Incorporating Climate Considerations of Billion Dollars and Grants to Cities and States to support resiliency planning so that we can mitigate the effects of climate change. At the State Department, Secretary Kerry has made climate a top priority in virtually all of his engagements with other nations, for example, China and India. And then, again, with regard to criminal justice reform, the current Attorney General and her team have continued the work that was done by the previous Attorney General, Eric Holder, of new policies looking at what we can do to reform criminal justice to provide re-entry opportunities for many in our society who are looking for a second chance. So there is this comprehensive approach and it is really one of the hallmarks of this presidency and of this administration and then it's what leads me then to talk for a few minutes about my brother's keeper, which we also refer to affectionately as MBK. Two and a half years ago the President spoke from the White House to the entire nation in response to the verdict in the Trayvon Martin case. The President spoke about the angst and anger that parents and families were feeling and about the challenges facing too many of this nation's young people, especially boys and young men of color. In those remarks the President observed that Trayvon Martin could have been his own son or 35 years ago he could have been Trayvon Martin. The President said, quote, there are a lot of kids out there who need help who are getting a lot of negative reinforcement. There has to be more we can give them in this country a sense that their country cares about them and values them and is willing to invest in them. Long after the President gave those remarks he and I talked about what he could do to really lift up the importance of this work and to use the power of the presidency and the President was very clear that he wanted to do something significant. He wanted to use his power over the federal government but also his power to convene people from the private sector to get engaged in this work. So he launched My Brother's Keeper six months after he had made the remarks about Trayvon Martin from a ceremony in the East Room of the White House. That ended of itself, again, quite significant because it demonstrated how this was a priority of this President just by where he held the ceremony to launch this great effort to address persistent opportunity gaps that boys and young men of color are especially confronted with. That was my ninth day working in the White House. It was quite a way to start the work there. During his speech that day the President reflected on how personal the work is to him. He said, quote, I could see myself in a lot of these young men there were young men behind the President that day on the stage the only difference is that I grew up in an environment that was a little more forgiving so that when I made a mistake the consequences were not as severe. He continued, quote, the plain fact is there are some Americans who in the aggregate are consistently during worse in our society groups that have had the odds stacked against them in unique ways that require unique solutions. Groups who've seen fewer opportunities that have spanned generations and by almost every measure the group that is facing some of the most severe challenges in the 21st century in this country are boys and young men of color. So here are just a few of those measures that the President was alluding to. I could go on and on with many, many, many negative statistics but I just want to cite a few. Boys and young men of color are more likely than their peers to be born into low income families and to live with isolated poverty. To live with one or no parent or to attend high poverty poor performing schools. Moreover in schools and in courts boys and young men of color too often receive harsher penalties for the same infractions as similarly charged white males and are least likely to be given a second chance. And finally boys and young men of color are more likely to live in communities with higher rates of crime with negative encounters with police and victimization by violent crime. Black boys for instance are 6% of the nation's population but more than half of the nation's homicide victims. The President thinks about these issues in a very, very personal way as I've mentioned. He talks about it as often as he possibly can. For example just a few months ago when he visited El Reno Federal Prison in Oklahoma. He said he met young people there and they weren't that different than the mistakes he made and the mistakes that a lot of us make. The difference is that the guys he met at that prison did not have the kinds of support structures. The second chance is the resources that would allow them to survive or get beyond those mistakes. So the President is very clear about this. The challenges our youth face demand that we act with urgency but also with a sense of the long haul. Because not only because the challenges are dropping, the disparities mind numbing, but also because we have an economic obligation. We're compelled to act because there is an economic imperative if our country is to remain globally competitive. We cannot continue to have so many millions of young people missing from this society. A recent report from the President's own Council of Economic Advisors showed that if we close the gap of labor force participation between 16 to 54 year old men of color and non-Hispanic white men of the same age, total US GDP would increase by 2%. So there's an economic imperative as much as there's a moral obligation. So MBK is about obliterating the barriers our kids face and building stronger communities and stronger opportunity streams. In less than two years we could not be more excited about the momentum around MBK, the energy and the enthusiasm we've seen all across the country. Out of the White House we've essentially adopted a three-pronged approach to the MBK work. First, review and reform of federal policy. Second, in-state and local engagement. And third, supercharged private sector investment and collaboration. Let me briefly talk about those three work streams. First, federal policy. Over the course of the past two years MBK Task Force, which again is an interagency working group of a dozen federal agencies has led to new and expanded grant opportunities out of the Department of Labor, Department of Education, Department of Energy and so on. For example, in July of last year I joined then Secretary of Education Arnie Duncan and Attorney General Loretta Lynch at a correctional facility in Jessup, Maryland where they were there to announce a pilot program called Second Chance Pell to test new models to allow incarcerated Americans to receive Pell Grants to support the pursuit of their post-secondary education and of course we've already received hundreds of applications nationwide. The road to prison is paved in many, many instances by poor education. So the way out of prison, of course, for many people has to be a good education and a good job when they get out. Second, in November, the President visited Newark, New Jersey, which is one of the stronger MBK communities to highlight the re-entry process of formerly incarcerated individuals and to announce new actions aimed at helping Americans who have paid their debt to society rehabilitate and reintegrate themselves back into their communities. It was during that visit that the President announced a round of what we call MBK federal policy deliverables responding to recommendations that were also part of the President's task force on criminal justice. First, banning the box for almost all federal jobs to delay inquiries into criminal history until later in the hiring process so that, again, once someone has served their debt, paid their debt to society, they get a fair shot at a federal job. Another was the Department of Housing and Urban Development and the Department of Justice are working together now with the National Bar Association to seal and expunge records for hundreds of young adults who have made mistakes but who need a fresh start in housing. The Department of Education has awarded millions and grants to help formerly incarcerated youth and young adults successfully re-enter school and other educational programs. There are dozens and dozens if not hundreds of new programs that have been launched as a result of MBK across federal agencies. Second, let me talk about place-based what we call place-based, which is really comprehensive community engagement because that's what will sustain this work past the presidency without question. There are now more than 200 communities that have accepted the My Brother's Keeper Community Challenge representing 49 states the District of Columbia 19 tribal nations 49 states. So the 50th state is going to have a primary next week so anyway that's the hint. It's been remarkable there are some states in this country that have as many as 6 to 8 to 12 MBK communities and what is done is brought together the public sector and the private sector local government with the help of foundations and others who've been doing this work for a long time to get together and design cradle to college and career action plans to address what we call 6 milestones in the lives of all young people where we can have the greatest impact on their lives and we know this based on evidence and data it's not anecdotal it's not stuff that we imagined it's based on hard data so that's the work that's being done in communities all across this country and it's evidence based and it's goal oriented and it is both urgent and long term. In Detroit Mayor Duggan announced their MBK local action plan which was developed by more than 100 local leaders and youth from the Detroit area in the next 5 years Detroit plans to recruit and match 5000 new mentors to employ 5000 additional men of color in high growth industries to reduce suspensions by 50% and to enroll 90% of its 4 year olds in preschool and they have matched the resources and the strategies to get that work done in Boston the Boston Foundation has invested millions to expand the streets safe outreach programs to youth at risk of violent crime and they're doing this in coordination with the Boston Police Department and the Mayor's Public Safety Initiative in Philadelphia Philadelphia has already reduced school based arrests by 50% using a new school diversion program and 2 weeks ago Philadelphia announced that it has seen more than 90 million dollars in new investments in MBK programs in Philadelphia alone 90 million dollars just in Philadelphia in the District of Columbia DC has recruited 500 volunteers to serve as mentors and to help increase the percentage of students reading at grade level by the 4th grade and they've given more than 100 student paid internships for next summer that's the second part it's the community based part the third work stream so to speak so again in response to the President's call to action foundations and businesses and social enterprises have responded to his call to action by taking a series of steps to provide additional funding aligned with the national initiatives under MBK thus far more than a half billion dollars in grants and in kind resources and a billion dollars in financing from community development finance institutions have been independently committed to advance the mission of MBK including investments in safe and effective schools mentoring programs, juvenile justice reforms and school design and in May of 2015 a group of private sector leaders launched a new start up the My Brother's Keeper Alliance which itself is working to advance the goals of the President's efforts out of the White House and again to make sure that the work around this nation is done in January 2017 this new MBK Alliance start up was initiated with more than 80 million dollars in private sector investments and an impressive board of directors including the leaders of Fortune 100 corporations and community minded celebrities earlier this month the non-profit organization Mentor and the National Basketball Association formally launched the in real life campaign as part of the NBA's commitment to My Brother's Keeper this campaign challenges Americans across the franchises the NBA is based in to mentor so that every young person who wants to be connected to a mentor has that opportunity the NBA is using player stories alongside stories about mentors and mentees and updates from grassroots activities shared across the country you will see throughout the rest of this month this is NBA's All-Star month you'll see a lot of attention around My Brother's Keeper and the NBA throughout the course of this month just recently in USA Today Bill Russell one of the greatest players in NBA history released an op-ed that was published in the USA Today about mentoring and My Brother's Keeper and last week Kendrick Lamar released a video amplifying his story about the importance of mentoring and how it relates to the president's initiative so there's a lot of effort and attention that's being brought to this from the from the private sector to sum all this MBK stuff up let me just say the following last May when we were with president Obama in the Bronx and he was there for the creation of the MBK alliance he took a moment doing his remarks to speak directly to the youth who had gathered there these are very very personal issues to him he said quote he said this to the young people there there's nothing not a single thing that's more important to the future of America and whether or not you and young people all across this country can achieve your dreams president's been very clear that this will be important work for him after he leaves the White House in his personal capacity will be among his priorities so for me whether it's my cabinet or my secretary had on or it's to help lead MBK everything that I get to do is about disrupting the status quo focusing on what works and uniting diverse stakeholders to realize the president's vision for a more fair and equitable society where everyone has a fair shot and everybody is in the game and while admittedly social transformation is complex and often measured over decades I can personally see from the trips I take across this country that we are getting closer and closer to that goal every day of a more fair more equitable society but again we have a long way to go but it is making a difference and I couldn't be more excited about the future that we will be able to leave behind after we leave the White House and beyond I want to close with an observation about where we are in the last parts of this presidency the last 11 months really going back to the beginning I would ask you all not to ask me any questions about the Iowa caucuses because I'm not going to talk about those at all it makes me a little bit too emotional because it's the reality that we are getting closer to the end of this incredible administration so I don't gloat, so this isn't to gloat so let's just stipulate that after the 2014 midterm elections in which Democrats suffered some pretty significant losses across the country the political media in Washington was quick to get the tables to the president to his administration pretty harshly minimizing the remainder of his time in office in many cases for example there were some commentators who were referring to Barack Obama as the lamest lame duck in American history that he was going to run the clock out some even said the president was tired and looking defeated and I listened to some of that stuff and thought they just don't know so that has not been the case instead the president said to all of us the day after an election he called all of his senior advisors into a meeting and talked about how we were entering the fourth quarter and a lot of interesting things happened the president is a huge sports fan as many of you know so in the fourth quarter first part of the fourth quarter under the president's leadership the following things happened we had 12 more months beginning to an unparalleled record of consecutive months of job growth we reached a historic international agreement to combat climate change we reached an agreement with Iran with other countries around the world that verifiably cuts off all of its paths to a nuclear weapon we advanced relations with Cuba we achieved conclusion of a historic 12 month trade agreement we saw a marriage equality upheld in 50 states we also saw a bipartisan agreement to further improve K-12 education so that was all in 2015 and of course the beginning of 2016 among other things we saw the president's announcement of executive actions to better protect communities and children across this country from gun violence all those achievements and all that we will continue to do is not the result of an accident or lucky timing it really is a result of a president determination he looks down field his vision is focused on the future and he makes sure that all of us understand that and work with the same approach so we're halfway through the fourth quarter the president and all of us in his cabinet are going to hustle on every play on every down let me finish with some football analogies there's a basketball one well maybe it's a football one too there's no prevent defense happening we're not just sort of there to say we're just looking for every opportunity to continue to execute until the very end just like they do in the big house in better times so thank all of you for listening to me I look forward to your questions your observations, your suggestions again as long as you're not about the Iowa caucuses thank you for listening and go blue so thank you all very much good evening everyone my name is Tabitha Bentley I'm an MPP student here as well as a PhD student in education and my research focuses on the ideas of collective impact and using collective impact to promote systematic change in education and part of that work is actually working with the My Brother's Keeper Initiative here in Washington County and it's great to see some of the county leaders here this evening joining us for this conversation and talk so as Dean Collins mentioned this is our Q&A session and I would encourage you to continue to write your questions down and feed them to us and our first question here is for Mr. Johnson what do you think is the single largest problem faced by young people of color? well there's certainly the material problems they face that relate to poor schools living in impoverished neighborhoods being surrounded by violence all things that we know to be true and that we have to address there's also though what I would call the perception set of problems that have to do with the importance of changing the narrative and by that I mean the way they view themselves the way they think people like us view them the way we view them because so much of what we do is based on the expectations excuse me that people have about us so I think as much as anything else it's about changing the narrative in all those many ways did you say there were some young people here from Washtenaw County that you work with? where did I misunderstand? you want my mic? I think I'm okay I was mentioning the Washtenaw County is my brother's keeper initiative and the committee members that are here this evening would they raise their hands great thank you thank you very much my name is Eric Wiley I'm a senior in the BA program and my focus is on urban inequality and specifically how we incorporate social justice in urban development and the second question we have today is how do you expect things to change with the change of leadership and what will be your next steps professionally with the conclusion of the Obama administration? take that how you want I think it's sort of caucusy but not no I know so I can actually your first question has to do with how we will continue to work after the end of the Obama administration is that fair so I guess in several ways one is as I mentioned we have been working across the federal agencies whether it's the labor department, the education department even the energy department around national labs and STEM education and opportunities try to make sure that we are able to make changes that people will be able to point to that have made a difference again the next 11 months are really critical to that too because we would want whoever the next president is to look at a lot of the programs in the way we have focused those programs on where the greater disparities are greatest disparities are and maintain those approaches so while I can't say that my brother's keeper will be an initiative of the next president we are going to try to make sure we institutionalize change that whatever it's called brings about what we believe to be important in terms of making changes second as I mentioned the president is committed to this work for the rest of his life he has said that it's lifetime work for him so you know there's now this my brother's keeper alliance with which I refer to and that's a start up and hopefully it will continue to progress rapidly and well and it may be and other efforts that the president will continue this work and for me personally I will stay engaged in this work for the rest of my life because it means that much to me as well then I'll find some other things to do after I get some rest so this question comes to us from twitter how does the president respond to criticism that MBK either does not do enough or is misguided in scope? it's not a softball question so you know look I know what difference we are able to make in how the various heads of agencies view their role in addressing these issues and the fact that it is a clearing call of the president means that people really pay a lot of attention to it and feel accountable for making changes within federal policy and then also looking at how we've been able to get private sector partners involved in this work who either weren't involved or just couldn't figure out how to collaborate with other folks on the ground to make a difference and the third thing I'd say really you know I grew up in Baltimore which is a pretty tough place and when I was growing up it was tough and it continues to be tough and it's certainly seen its share of unrest over time and you go to Baltimore and talk to the young people who are being affected by my brother's keeper Baltimore already and they are more hopeful than people would ever imagine they are in cities so to me we have to be able to prove that it makes a difference so don't get me wrong it's not going to be about happy stories of kids who are small and saying they feel like the president loves them and their country loves them we want to make sure they believe that's true and prove that's true but that it's done in tangible ways so I'm confident that it's making a big difference and we'll have statistics to show that that leads nicely into our next question so with NVK what has been the most significant indicator of measuring its success? I think the 200 plus communities that have agreed to do the work and they're doing it under my brother's keeper and they're doing it in a way that is sort of the frame of my brother's keeper where they look at specific milestones and they determine that depending on the circumstances in their city for example in some cities youth unemployment summer jobs is a bigger challenge than in others or suspension and expulsion of three and four year olds in preschools is a bigger issue in some communities in fact that's true 4,000 three and four year olds suspended from preschool a couple years ago across this country a little 90 pounders who you just say come on but there are a lot of complicated issues about that so we are able to make sure that communities have the flexibility of course to do the work that is important to where they are but the fact that many communities have agreed to do this work and are building sustaining work it's not work that is like okay and this will expire on January 20th 2017 but have three and four year plans in place already to do the work on forward. So this question is in regards to your position as cabinet secretary who are the most rewarding and difficult cabinet members to work with? Michael do you want to answer that question for me? Michael they are all great it's no more sophisticated I love my job okay our next question asks how can cities like Flint, Michigan pursue all the reforms necessary to improve conditions for its residents? Environmental improvement, climate criminal justice reform, MBK private sector economic development well Flint I know has of course some real emergency challenges that has to tend to that of course have implications too for the health of its children and therefore the education of its children as well nevertheless Flint by no means can do by itself what it needs to do across the board in all those areas that you mentioned I know I can just tell you from perspective of the federal government that as we've done in other cities and I don't know we will follow exactly this model in Flint we'll see but we've been able as I mentioned with regard to Detroit and it's been the case with Baltimore we have actually sent federal teams led by a particular person in to provide as much federal assistance as possible so I don't know whether or not that will be the case with Flint but it's a model as I mentioned a place based model of work that needs to be replicated I think by the federal government whoever is in charge in January of 2017 it has to be comprehensive it has to be based on a broader view of the needs of Flint as in any other city what have been some of the funding mechanisms used to push local MBK initiatives forward I'd mentioned that communities get together and they develop action plans and those action plans include not just an approach they're going to take where they're going to address one of the six milestones again from cradle or whether it's about reentry programs but also how they're going to go about getting the private sector to invest in collaboration with the public sector in those communities so again for example Philadelphia being a great example of a city that got together with a lot of businesses in the city of Philadelphia either based there or they had strong operations there and came up with guaranteed investments what they would put into the MBK related work so it's through those collaborations and quite frankly it's among people who maybe hadn't been talking to each other about getting involved in this work that it's always been about franchises and where they were going to put their next restaurant or whatever as opposed to what kind of jobs might be available for young people or apprenticeships or whatever else to ask was there any concern the POTUS waited until too late in his administration to launch MBK No, there's a long history of the work that of course we've been doing across many many issues whether having to do with the American economy and jobs having to do with healthcare having to do with education opportunities and reforms that would lead to what we've seen in terms of increased graduation rates and attendance in colleges I think, again what I'd say about MBK is that the president was profoundly affected by what happened in the Trayvon Martin situation and just decided that it was an important opportunity given where the country was and given the circumstances to pull us all together in one particular initiative but that was not to say that we had been ignoring those issues before because we weren't aware of the end of MBK remaining a key program and are there better chances under a Democratic President of the United States So I'm not going to talk about partisan political stuff except to say that well this isn't except to say because this is in fact true in that we have found a lot of support among Republicans particularly in the communities like Indianapolis for example it had a Republican mayor who was one of the early mayors to endorse MBK and we've seen that in Fresno California for example where a Republican mayor did it as well and we've gotten a lot of expressions for support not necessarily support for a new appropriation that would fund MBK related programs but again that funding can come through a variety of other things around Department of Education funding but we've seen a tremendous amount of support from Republicans for MBK and religious conservatives as well as viewed as one of the least partisan things that we've developed by those who want to view what we do as partisan which is not the case Alright our next question asks how is the MBK task force encouraging cities that haven't joined especially those with high percentage of boys and young men of color to declare itself an MBK city? So the good news is I don't think there are any of those left in terms of large and medium sized cities there aren't many, there are still some and it's honestly keeping up with the 200 or so that are already MBK communities and making sure that all those communities are doing their work effectively is a challenging mission for us so we're really focused on that communities that this is something that has to be driven by local communities largely though in that community leaders and folks have to decide if they want to become an MBK community or what kind of MBK community they want to become they need to make those determinations really at a local level How does MBK talk with boys on the ground about the planning and implementation of MBK are their leadership roles for black and brown males youth in the decision making? Is this mandated so to speak under MBK construct that your action plan address how you make sure locally that you have young people involved in the planning of the work that's one thing that goes to really the quality of the MBK plan so that's spaked into what communities should do second though I've gone around probably to two dozen MBK communities over the past year and always insist that the listening sessions so to speak that we have include young people in both the planning but also in terms of who I can speak to to solicit their ideas and I can't tell you how many times I've gone back to the White House having had a young person say tell President Obama I said such and such and if I can figure out a way to tell him right away what they said sometimes that opportunity presents itself but I remember once the President I had it's probably about a year after we had started MBK and the Washington Post had as well and I was feeling pretty happy about that sort of going to having Republican support particularly in the case of Wall Street Journal and the President asked me now long after that those editorials ran how are we doing with MBK and I was like well we got this great editorial from the Wall Street Journal and such and such and he kind of shut me off and said I wanted to know what the young people think about the work that we're putting into it and he meant that because he asked when he's out on the road all the time how do you think that my brother's keeper works to address issues that face young men of color without the erasure of problems that young women of color may face one of the things that I think we need to highlight more and should have highlighted better at the beginning of MBK quite frankly is that the federal government cannot design programs for race or gender exclusive there's the U.S. Constitution first of all and then there's just fairness right so while we have had of course an emphasis on boys and young men of color because as President mentioned in his own voice some of these disparities that really trouble the society or especially the case with them everything we've designed around MBK is gender or race neutral has to be attacking issues where the disparities are greatest and just as a matter of fact it's going to have a greater impact on boys and young men of color if that's where you're focusing on the disparities so by no way is what we're doing under MBK especially from the federal task force work exclusive of helping girls and even helping all children quite frankly so I believe this is going to be our last question and it's a two part question so that's okay I should shut up do you have a one part question? what is your most rewarding experience at the University of Michigan as a student and also what experiences helped prepare you for your current role with MBK so can I say something sort of frivolous is going to see was his name my memory is fading too much so it was one Saturday and it was early in the semester when you don't have to study as hard as you would have to later in the semester and going to see a Michigan Notre Dame game that was a great thing and then going to a jazz concert that night and it's terrible because the name of that jazz musician he's a trumpeter come on here somebody help me he's deceased now yes Miles Davis thank you very much that was just a trick question I knew who it was and just starting my second year law school and that was like the most fun weekend I had when I was school I think just the most most rewarding thing was really not as a student but it's been really quite frankly as an alum and some of the things that I mentioned about my own father and my own children and my mom and stuff because you know this legacy these legacies these family legacies are incredibly important they really are and they provide tremendous opportunities but they also provide you with opportunities that are priceless experiences that are priceless and so I'm really so drawn to that I think in terms of my job now and what prepared me forward from having been in school here is just the rigor of the studies here at the law school and also the sense that you know you should if you're willing and able yourself to do public service and for me I've been able to do public service and also private law firm and other work but just a commitment to public service that I left here with since I needed to go and make a difference and give back it's all very true good way to end this question my thanks of course to our special guest I'd also like to thank all of you for joining us for all of your questions I hope you will stay for continuing the conversation at a reception out in our great hall and I hope you'll consider coming back next Monday we'll be hosting US Secretary of Labor Thomas Paris and so hope to see many of you back he's one of my favorites tell him that please he's one of my favorites tell him that just a final thank you for your thoughts your perspective all of your experiences we've learned a lot thank you very much