I recently joined 23 other executives and CEO’s from Virginia to attend a briefing with White House staff members in conjunction with The Office of Public Engagement (OPE). The OPE helps open the two-way dialogue, ensuring that the issues impacting our communities have a receptive team dedicated to making their voices heard within the Administration.
We spent two hours hearing from several White House staffers, including the Deputy Director of Public Engagement, the Deputy Director for White House Energy Policy, the Chief Technology Officer for the White House and the Executive Director of the White House Business Council.
Most of the time was spent listening to staff members brief us on the initiatives in place to stimulate business and the economy. I won’t go into the gory detail, but the key items mentioned included 1) a discussion about activities designed to stimulate small business growth in technology in the health, energy and manufacturing sectors, 2) broadening access to electronic data in all sectors, 3) expanding domestic production in oil and gas (unfortunately, Virginia offshore oil leases will not be part of this), 4) expanding energy efficiency, and 5) investing in clean technologies.
Another briefing was on the American Jobs Act (a handout was provided) and it was mentioned that many of the ideas were generated from business leaders. Finally, a recent report from the President’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness was mentioned. The link to this report is below.
My only disappointment was that a representative from Health and Human Services did not attend. A one hour delay in getting our security clearance through Secret Service systems caused that topic to be dropped from the agenda. I also found out that November was proclaimed National Entrepreneurship Month by President Obama. We all received our own copy of the proclamation with the President’s seal and signature. Overall, this was a very interesting and productive day and an experience that I will not soon forget.
Lee Weisiger
Titan Group LLC
Partner
Winning with Titan 
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