is a huge task, both for the contractor as well as for the department of defense to administer all of that. we do not know how that would be accomplished. >> effect i think, i have already had five contracts put on hold. they have not been stopped. in fact, idea and asked by the contractor, when can you finish this? it is that simple. they are not forthcoming. when you ask where the funds are, when we can expected, you cannot, so we are virtually shut down with those contracts right now. >> the gentleman's time has expired. mr. johnson. >> thank you, mr. chairman. i have to tell you, i have to pinch myself. i thought i might be dreaming.

house republicans are holding hearings to talk about cuts to government spending and how they will hurt to jobs and the economy. it is really amazing. no one thinks sequestration is a good idea. the meat axe approach to defense cuts is irrational, and it is obviously bad policy, and it was designed by my colleagues on the other side of the aisle, the republicans, to be so bad that we would make tough decisions about raising revenues and cutting spending so we can avoid it. nevertheless, here we are, playing brinkmanship again, the same folks who self righteously opposed the president obama $700 billion stimulus package, the same folks who sneered and say that the government never created a single job in america

and never would, they are now wringing their hands because of the impact on jobs of about $50 billion in defense cuts in 2013, and of course $500 billion over 10, but $50 billion next year. now, there is an easy way out of this. make tough choices and tough compromises to raise revenues, cut spending, and meet our budget targets. the president is willing to do that. but the republican solution is the ryan budget. training programs, cutting food stamps, health care for children, the senate and the poor, foreclosure prevention, and cutting taxes for the rich, and blow this up with a missile shield, nuclear facilities that nobody wants and billions of

dollars of waste, far in excess of caps. with all due respect to our witnesses today, you will not see house republicans call and community leaders, church leaders, the owners of mom and pop businesses, or struggling homeowners to testify on the impact of all of these cuts to help the poor and the jobless and the sick. now, to our witnesses today, each of you are highly talented, highly sought after executives, and i imagine that you are pretty well compensated for the values that you add to your companies, and i deeply respect that. as you have made clear, they are also rightly concerned about the impact of sequestration on your businesses, your employees, and our country's national defense. my first question is, would each of you be willing to forgo the

4% to 5% of your annual income that you save under the bush tax cuts in order to avoid sequestration? yes or no, mr. stephens? >> i am afraid i am not want to be able to give you a yes or no answer to your question, sir, and i offer that to you respectfully. >> mr. o'keefe? >> sure. i think the choice of revenue and spending is entirely the prerogative of others. >> would you be willing to forgo your savings it the bush tax cuts were made permanent in lieu of sequestration? would you rather undergo sequestration, or what is your position? >> my opinion of the priority is far less significant than yours.

>> you are not going to give me an answer. >> that is a prerogative that is really important for you to make those choices. >> i got you. how about you, ms. hess? >> i will do the same. >> all right, nobody wants to give up their 4% or 5% that they would save it the bush tax cuts were made permanent. that is exactly the sentiment that is being represented by the republicans here in congress. they will not impose any taxes, any tax increase on the as you can afford to bear it, because of the grover norquist pledge, and my time has expired. >> my time has expired.

>> a justin upton on how we got here. we had last year, an opportunity to do the reconciliation or shut down the government, and all parties were involved. since then, we have passed in the house a solution. we have taken action in the house. the senate has done nothing but talk. all they have to do according to the constitution is passed the bill in the senate. then we would go to conference,

and then we would have real negotiations and talk because plants had been laid out, but the senate has refused to take action, and the president has not given the leadership and direction to get it passed this point, so that is just correcting the history. >> thank you for being here. we do have different things. i fall into a different camp. i believe business is in bed with this. and the higher the tax rate, the higher the cost, and therefore the less they get to sell, they're forgetting -- giving an advantage to the overseas competitors, and if you listen to the president's initial speech, a couple of years ago, they talked about the fact that we needed to reduce the corporate income tax rate.

he then turned around and withdrew and never gave us a specific proposal, but 18 months ago, i was a small-business owner. i will tell you that what i've found in my small business was my percentage of fixed costs were higher. i did not have the ability to do this the way the other competitors do. the last dollars worth of revenue -- the amount i paid income taxes, -- have you found that to be true? >> that is true. very much so. >> and that is where i am concerned about this anti-profit mentality that some have in washington right now, while our large industries, and i certainly want all of our large

industries to be profitable, but it is what we are doing with the small businesses, and this goes with the large eyes. if you use a% of your revenue, and 8% revenue loss would be much greater on her, on her business and employees, so i want to go to you, because you talk about the back of the on the mathematics. you have got approximately an 8% operating margin in your business. is that correct? >> it is closer to 10%, but, yes, sir. >> and your problem is just about 6%? when you talk about your back of the honorable a mathematics, you have got approximately 120,000 employees. multiplied that, 10%, which will

be a revenue. 80% some of your revenue is government business, so that is a 8% loss. that does not correlate. it also correlates with what you say your reduction in employees will be. nobody gets a paycheck. is that a fair statement? >> we performed against a set of objectives every year. it is an important objective. if you do not generate a profit, that would be correct. >> with public held companies. what are your obligations with regard to sequestration? hal is the impending threat of sequestration affecting your

reporting, your shareholders, and the fact that this is currently the law? there are no plans to rescind this law other than what the house has done. again, what obligations to the three of you have to your shareholders? to discuss sequestration? >> i would say it is true of every high-integrity business person we know. transparency in our disclosures, and it is important, not taking unnecessary risks, but with honesty and accuracy. the status of the business and the risks, certainly to the equity investors, we have a collateral responsibility to the credit rating agencies, certainly to our customers and our suppliers, because they are our partners in this enterprise,

so we have been disclosing in and others. >> i am short on time. >> we clearly plan to bid your to this, and we are looking to this. we do nab a responsibility to our shareholders and our boards. >> the gentleman's time has a expired. mr. ryan? >> thank you. back when i was younger, i used to coach like ninth grade basketball, and there was a stunning dynamic when you get into coaching. you can be a coach and see a coach, and they can be the most objective person in the world in

analyzing their players, their talent, and then they lose all objectivity. they think their kid is of little better than they probably are, so their kids starts and all of the other stuff. in the midst of the little league season. it is just stunning they completely have a blind spot when it comes to government spending for the military. i represent akron, ohio, so we have a lockheed facility, locking defense. i get it. this is government spending, and it is creating jobs. this area we are talking about is that a cut in government spending is going to cost jobs,

and that is why we are here, and we do not want to see that happen, and to have my colleagues from south carolina talk about the jobs in virginia that are going to be lost, or the warren notice, that was put in law by an ohio senator because the factories were being closed down in the 1980's, so we know what can potentially happen here, and i find it stunning that we can sit here and have a conversation about job losses because of these reductions. but turn around in the same breath and see that they had absolutely no effect. we need your help. there is a narrative in this country that every dollar that the government spends is a waste of money, should be privatized, outsourced, done by the private

sector, so forth. transportation, education. i am not here to lecture anybody, but i think it is funny, because i just try to imagine if you were an energy company, and alternative energy company, if you were a smaller company, if you were a wind mill company, and there is government funded, and we need to put up windmills so we can reduce our dependency and get out of all these entanglements, you guys would be crucified right now. i am with that. i think it is a bad idea. it is terrible what is going to happen. all government funding is not bad.

it is overwhelming. now, we are swimming upstream. this is very necessary. this is going to be affected by this. a guy like me, maybe we need some government funding for security in our neighborhoods, and we need to fund the program or grants. it would be crucified. i am a liberal tree hugger. government does not have the responsibility to do that. we have to get past this. this is the end result of 20 to 30 years of bashing the government, and here we are. sequestration is coming to a head right now. so i just want to ask a question. the time is short. we're going to have to go out

and borrow money to make sure that the sequestration does not go online. we have got to borrow it. i do not think it is a good idea. help me make the argument to my constituents that it is ok to go out and borrow money to make sure that these cuts do not happen. can you help me make that argument? why it is that way at this point? why it is important for us to go out and maybe borrow until the economy recovers? can any of you make that argument? >> the gentleman's time has expired. he made some beautiful, eloquent arguments, but you will have to answer those for the record, it could. >> can i get those for the record? >> i will be happy to ask witnesses if they will provide it for the record. also for the record, this

committee is the armed services committee. we have the responsibility to look after the defense, and we have the responsibility to provide. there is a difference between that and providing -- >> will the gentleman yield? >> -- we have a responsibility to provide for the general welfare. >> this is not the general welfare committee. this is the armed services committee. >> mr. chairman, we have an obligation to make sure that mr. stevens he is getting those bright, intelligent people. they have got a pell grant, education. >> we can go on, i am sure, mr. ryan -- >> i am happy to, mr. chairman. >> but we do not have the time, and we will now turn it over.

>> i almost want to give you time to answer the question, but -- >> do you want to use your time for that? >> if we are going to have a written response, perhaps. you really are the titans of industry, big and small, and you have awesome responsibilities, not just to your shareholders and really to this nation, but that responsibility is very direct with the military, and the defense of this country, as the chairman pointed out, but your responsibilities because of your position go far beyond that. it really goes towards providing leadership. we have had some discussion from mr. johnson and now mr. ryan. i think it is really important. i do not want sequestration.

i voted not to have sequestration, but the real question is about the deficit and about the financing of our government. and it is either going to be cut, we have argued against cuts in the defense industry, ok, and my question is then what do we cut, and/or, and/or do we raise revenue? and i want you to answer this question as a leader in america that each of you are. mr. stevens, what do we do? do we make cuts in other areas, and if so, what? if we raise revenue, where? >> i am flattered that you would look at this. my board holds me accountable. members of the community in which we live and work. we look toward you as leaders. you are our leaders.

we have a portfolio of responsibilities in our company. that is our domain. i look to you. it is incredibly complicated services. >> excuse me. the leisure company contribute to political contributions, political action groups, and to those action groups express your opinion? >> we to contribute to them, yes, sir. >> for example, do you contribute to the u.s. chamber of commerce? >> we do. >> do you agree there should be no tax increases? >> we contributed those that we think express the view that we have, which i believe is the focus of the committee's attention today, and my role is to communicate the disastrous effects of the sequestration that will to chivvy to national security. >> i am going to forgo the rest, unless you want to answer my

question. the reality is that price times now you have been asked the question. i want to ask you to take this up. you are leaders. mr. o'keefe, you were the leader of a very successful university. you have not given up your leadership role. we have a very difficult situation. we have to come to grips with the reality and put aside all of the rhetoric we have here, and we are more than willing to do this, but you also have a responsibility, and i would ask you to ponder this.

if you do not want cuts in the military, then where do we cut? social security? medicare? employment opportunities? education? and what revenue do we cut, or do we do it at all? i do not want to put you on the hot seat anymore, but i would ask you to take up your larger responsibility as very, very influential men and women. thank you very much. >> i very much appreciate the spirit and context of your commentary, and that is primarily what you have offered here, and certainly we all accept the leadership responsibility we bear, and that is why we are here.

we have spoken to a mechanism on have to achieve these reductions, not what the alternatives are. these are complex challenges. again, you have observed the importance of really having the opinion of citizens, and that is a separate point. there is the challenge of revenue and spending and objectives, and how that gets sorted out, there are methods to do it, and this is one we are advising is more destructive than others. not where it is applied. it is across the board, all discretionary spending, just as observed in the very opening comments. >> the gentleman's time has expired. we just received news of a terrorist attack on a bus in bulgaria, and i want to express my condolences to them and our

ally, bulgaria. >> i want to follow up. when we get down to the tough question of how to avoid this, basically, it is up to us, as if everybody else in the country has no role whatsoever to play in public policy decisions. let me tell you, that attitude express is the number one biggest problem that we have, the notion that you have no responsibility in solving the problem. the on the responsibility you have is explaining to us how bad it will be in one given area. is that what public policy has come down to in this country? and i will say this, you are in no way unique. everyone is concerned about what happens. they are concerned about the tax going up or about something else, and then we come down to

how to add it up. we cannot have anything to do with that. what happens is we divide and destroy, and every little piece of our country, to protect themselves and make no argument beyond that. it is much easier to say do not cut this, do not raise that tax. hard part is we all have some responsibility for making choices, and you flat refused about making those choices and dump it all on us. meanwhile, do not only flatly refused to say anything about it, but you also systematically kick our legs out from under us as we try to deal with it. even if it is with taxes, if nobody is advocating for the toxic cuts and the types of tax increases that are necessary to

deal with our government, then you are never going to build the political support necessary to get this nation to support those steps. it is not going to happen, and everybody hides behind that, and i know why. and i will say this. we have a far, far greater responsibility. we are the only ones that ultimately have to vote and will be held accountable. that greater responsibility is based in, and there is no way for us to do that, but group after group coming up here and singing do not cut this, do not raise that tax, and balance the budget, and then they refuse to move the needle at all on a solution to that, refuses to take a leadership role in moving the debate in the direction to get us to acknowledge that choices have to be made, we are dead. there is no way we can get public opinion.

i will close with this. from 2011, asking people what about the deficit, people say to balance the budget, and the listed every single area that the government spends money and ask if you would like to see the spending cut the same, cut, or increased. in every single category, they say foreign aid. 99% of where we spend our money, two-thirds say to increase it or keep it the same. those exact same people who express concern about the size of the deficit. and then asking if they want to raise taxes, and they say no. how do people form these opinions? they form these opinions because all they hear our people advocating for the tax cuts.

this is why we get a little vexed when people up here say you are going to kill our industry. but the reason you're in the position you're in is because of the problems with the deficit. ok, what do we do to get out of it? you have nothing to say on that. or do not increase spending. so what you're doing is not helping. we often advocate for things that do not add up. i am only here to talk about my area, so do not talk about the rest. we need help in getting the public to support this. if they do not, it will not happen.

>> my good friend, i sometimes disagree. this is one of those times. none of us was forced to run for this job. each of us chose to run for the house of representatives. we understand that we of the responsibility to make decisions. these people are here today at our request to talk about the guidance that they need to implement the laws that we have passed. i have not heard them say do n cut defense. maybe we should have another hearing on that, but i have not heard them say that. we have already implemented $487 billion. we are taking care. you ha passed a law that is going to cut another $600 billion out of defense. we just want to know how as business people do you expect us to comply with the law that was

passed and carry out those upsets -- those to the best of our ability. that is what they have advocated and talked about. i come from a small business background. it was not anything like building ships or planes or boats. we sold western wear. a pretty simple little business, a family business, but even at that level, we went to the market to buy products that we were going to buy for the first half of the year, and we would go to the different booths, and we would buy shirts and hats and jeans, and they would be shipped in a timely matter so we would have inventory in february and march and may, and they would come in and expect that we had the size that we needed. meanwhile, the suppliers after we gave them orders, they would

go and buy the things they needed to make the genes and the hats and the brits, and it was done in an orderly method because we did not have the government involved. they are trying to run their business in an orderly manner, and they need to know what to do in january and february and march so that our war fighters that are over and afghanistan right now, going outside the area and putting their lives on the line will have what they need to protect themselves and to carry out their mission with the direction of our commander- in-chief. i applaud them for the job that they do. i applaud all of our work force that is invested in that and gets up every day, goes to work,

with the best of their ability trying to carry out their mission to see that those -- that those fighters return home. that is the responsibility of this committee, and we will continue to carry out that responsibility. i also sit on the education committee, and i can talk about things, but while i am here as chairman of this committee, we will carry out that mission of looking out for our war fighters who are putting their lives on the line. thank you very much for being here today. i have one other final question i would like to submit for the record. we have omb coming up the first of august to testify. you have all talked about things you would like to see, but i would ask if you would please describe, except for ms. williams and does not have to deal with this, so that we can give them the questions

beforehand, necessary for you to be able to make decisions related to the sequestration. if you can get this to us so we can get it to them

>> if it could be removed tomorrow, would you be happy or sad? do you think it's a good piece of legislation or not? >> no. again, the second question is narrower than the first part. i think it's a good piece, it's good to address legislatively and the fast bulk of it is good. there's parts of it like the

swinging of a pendulum that go too far and ultimately i think get adjusted, and i think the regulators -- a lot of dodd-frank as a bill with skeletal, and a lot of the very, very important details were left to a regulatory process and the regulators themselves were having problems coming to the right conclusion and pursuing those big goes a little bit of a path to the regulars and that is happening now. it's not all determined, but if i could push a button and submit dodd-frank, no, i wouldn't want to have that. >> what about the volcker rule part of it, are you happy with that? >> i think the vocal rule which actually came in very late actually addressed issues that were not the problems of the system. and raise the rule of whether institutions like ourselves can carry, will be able to easily

carry out all the important financial functions that are frankly are needed. so i think that that was, and again, the vocal rule has passed and now remains to be seen how it is interpreted. >> you join an investment bank because it was a place where people aspire to join 10, 20 years ago. you think young people have as great a great an investment banking and today, people graduating from business school should go into investment bank? do your children want to go into investment banking? >> for my children i think it's an additional complexity of getting closer to me as opposed to further away. i think it's, i think kids today don't -- again, i have kids as you do as well, kids at the age when we would be thinking

workers were their age but i think it's now i think what i want to do for the next three to five years? and i will tell you that suits us because what we have provided to generations of people, great training. in other words, we bring people in, we working very hard. they learn presentation skills, how to think, how to learn rigor, and there are people who join us and they think they will stay only three years, and some of them think 30, and some people come to us and think they will stay 30 and the state three and the go to other places. but for us we always get great kids out of school, some of them really intend to stay investment banks and some of them, some of them is the first is thing from their mind. they come because what i rose they going to understanding finance, understand how to become a professional, to work hard, tough presentation skills, to step a couple of nights in rome to get a piece of hard work done.

>> are you able to recruit the best in people? >> we have 12% more applicants than they are before. and as far as our concern, last year when we get job offers, the acceptance rate we got back was in the mid-or high '80s. and i think harvard would be pleased with a yield. >> theirs is about 75%. >> that's why i know they would be pleased with the yield. >> today, historically goldman was famous for being an advisor to people or to companies. and now you're shifted more of business towards, call the proprietary investing or trading him is that fair to say? therefore, do you get the both of your earnings now from things were your the principle rather than the advisor, or is that not fair or accurate? >> we always distinguish, we have these words that means something to us and don't mean -- we've always been a principal business much less so in the proprietary business but the difference is most of the

activities we do our principle-based where we are taking risk and managing it. the difference is proprietary would be a subset. it's not when we are the other side of what other people want to do. it's where we decide to put a position because we like it. we always did some of that. it was never the driver of our business or what we mostly did. most of the time to principal risk that we day, the economic risk is you want to finance something of we have to decide whether to make a commitment. you have a company that has commodity risk and come to us, and you say can you take me out of my risk and we take that risk on ourselves. to the traders and the quantitative strategist and the people who analyze the risk in the great marketeers, it's the same thing. but we are in the business of facilitating other people's activities by lending a capital on the one hand, and risk profile and expertise on the other.

and that's always been the bold what we did. in addition we said, you know, we're such good marketers we said above the groups in the firm that didn't interact with clients, and they became proprietary traders and just put on risks that they wanted. that is something that folder addresses, like a clearly, when the writing was on the wall two years ago for that. we shut off the activity. but we're left with a substantial principal activity that we wield frankly so that other people can do their business without risk don't otherwise impede them and wish over those risks. >> you are a licensed bank. your bank. and there was a are clear that in your time suggesting are going to become a larger and larger bank a recent private bank the is that article accurate? >> yes, it's accurate. one of our strategies, i think they focus on that particular things what has the risk of

looking disproportionate but one of the things, one of our big strategic builders and direction to move in a single, it's not a hypothetical at this point the it's not a question of whether we want to be a bank. we are a bank. we have the costs, meeting the burdens of all that, the expenditures, the burdens, the compliance come to limitations on other behaviors of being a bank. so it's not a question of saying should we do banking activity, what are the cost versus what are -- we already have the regulation and expenses and the part of the business. the question is, what incremental cost, incremental to what we've already committed to would drive what kind of revenues. and from that point of view, we really should extend ourselves to do more private banking. it's not our intention to compete with the big commercial lenders or the big consumer lenders in the bank. we're going to stay true to who we are, and so we do banking as more of, the bank and we want to

do which will be a much smaller scale to be an extension of a private wealth management which is helping him private clients manage their assets to helping them with the liability of their balance sheet company to them, mortgages, other current financing arrangements. it's that kind of private banking that we want to grow, and also certain lending activities we can go into more. we don't have the aspiration to be trillion dollar, have a trillion dollars balance sheet dedicate to that banking. but $50 billion we could sir michael more than we are now. >> go back to where we were before. when hank paulson left to become secretary of the treasury, you are now the ceo, chairman of the organization, and you were 50 years old or something like that, around there? >> i think at the time i was, 50 or 51. >> all right. >> now i'm 150. [laughter] >> southern the world collapse and economy have all those problems we know about.

did you ever fear that goldman would not survive or all these firms wouldn't survive and the worst parts of the recession or the crisis of? >> if you asked me what i thought -- i'll answer that question. of course. i mean, i worry, you know, we said around and we do contingency planning for epidemic. we study path of the influenza virus because it doesn't epidemic in the world we world war ii how we staff our offices. we're in the risk management business. we spend tremendous amounts of time planning for or continue to planning for and coming up with ways of dealing with minor risks. i didn't think we're going to go under at all, but i got to tell you i spent a lot of time worrying about much more remote risks and that was at the time. so in other words, it was not a

risk that, a level that it wouldn't have enjoyed going to bed every night without much, as much of a risk as it was. it doesn't mean i believed it. so we got on our horse very, very quickly. so i know you had dinner as a speaker, warren buffett at berkshire hathaway. we get an equity race before t.a.r.p. was announced, and from berkshire hathaway built-in five bundles of preferred shares and then get a capital market transactions with the general public for another five and three quarters billion dollars in which was a lot more offered to us. so i would say that we didn't, we thought we were quite doing well, quite sustainable, and external markets did to because we're always able to raise money in the public markets. that isn't to say that the level of risk wasn't so high and i was relieved that the regulators and legislators were taking steps. you know, one of the ways in

which i think it's disappointing, and i think unfair, is the way the community of the official sector is being viewed in hindsight. because the world didn't blow up, they say gee, you took the steps, that was bad, it was unnecessary. well, it was unnecessary because maybe it was rendered unnecessary because they did it and it might have been, you, it might of the necessary had they not done it. >> if the situation were to arise again, what would you recommend the government do differently and what would you do different? >> i would recommend that hank call somebody else. do differently? i think, look, you plan and, but the world has a contingency of surprising and coming up with ways that you could have thought of. but certain pundits in hindsight said you thought about that at center. no one knew that was happening. this won't happen again because

people will have contingency plans for this. in hindsight what do i wish everyone could have done better? everyone should've had more capital. if you're us and people like us, you need more capital but you never would have needed it other than the event that produce the realization that you needed for capital. and so now of all the things that are being done, what would be the most important thing and the most effective and the least damaging to the system is the requirement that everything, every institution like ours and other similar to ours are more capital. everything else has to be -- you can do this, you can't do this. if you think that all that may turn out to be counterproductive. the thing that is most is have more capital. from the people who engineered the release, and i think you should cut some latitude. there were a lot of people took a lot of personal risk to interpret the responsibilities broadly, and to risk, didn't

have personal interests, they didn't get paid a lot of money for doing it, out of a sense of duty, and public responsibility, interpreted themselves broadly, and didn't implemented thing that work. so it's a bit of carving to kind of second-guess them in hindsight. now, in hindsight, not with them that they could've been more open, more descriptive, confided more in the legislative, been more open, but it wasn't a long time to do things. >> after the recession is over, some people criticize major investment banks, open received its fair share of criticism, private equity as well, why do think -- >> we got our fair share and some other people's fair share. >> why jason goldman was picked on more than others at more than its fair share? and do you think that was a misperception of what the roles you guys played? >> look, we went first, and i want to put away the fact that there was some bad behavior by certain individuals. the real thing is that there were not issues but the real thing is that was extrapolated

to a very big for them with very good relationships, and over a century long history of being very, very important to clients. i don't want to put, you know, the real issues that we had to do with away, but i will say i think part of the place that we held was a bit because we were a wholesale institution. we weren't active in people's lives. we had no consumer business. we didn't advertise to our advertising budget was zero. we had no dialogue with consumers because we simply weren't a consumer bank but there were no bank branches. we were a little mysterious, and that was a big problem. and then, of course, in hindsight that was a mistake because consumers is another word for citizens and taxpayers.

and while we didn't have so have to go dialogue with consumers, it turns out in hindsight we should have a better dialogue with taxpayers and citizens, because it turns out, and we should've known this, we played a very big part in their lives. and now we know ourselves that they play very big part in our lives. >> you may changes in that direction? >> we made changes and we know we have to reach out more and make yourself more aware. we are always engage in the public debates. people didn't, the general public didn't know specific things, but congressional staff on sovereigns around the world, the companies came to us, uses for advice. this became a liability to us, and shouldn't have. the numbers of people at goldman sachs at the height of their careers who would leave our business, our firm and a industry, go into public service because they had that kind mindset and that kind of commitment. and so we are always very much involved in big public issues and debate and a very big

resource for public policy decision-makers, but we weren't known to the general public for that and that was more than inconvenient. it was bad and it was a misstep. >> what would you like to see, when you are finally finish as being the chairman and ceo of goldman sachs, which presumably is many years in the future, you have no plans to leave, i assume? >> that's correct. >> what would you like ultimately to be her legacy at goldman sachs? you had a lot of distinguished predecessors. is there something you'd like to say this is what he did for goldman sachs? >> i'd like to be thought of as somebody who brought the firm through, you know, the times, made big contributions to the growth of the world when things were very, very good. and when things turn bad i'd like to think of someone who led a very important financial institution, made a contribution to remind people about the reality of things and not let people dissolve and succumb to that sentiment. and make sure that we are resilient, have proved ourselves

to be resilient and come out as a firm stronger on the other side financially and in terms of the contributions we make, and, frankly, with an enhanced reputation, which is not something, you know, with the general public which is not something that would've been an aspiration before because we didn't realize the relevance of that too is. >> so no regrets for giving up the practice of law. you're very happy with what you did and are very pleased with the situation today in terms of the role that goldman is going and the role you're playing at goldmans, is that right? >> i think that i, not altogether sorry i gave up the practice of law although i did enjoy the practice of law. but we can't, we not satisfied with, we can never be satisfied where we are. all of us, we are all strivers, and to let me tell you, the birds were chirping and the sun was shining can we find things to do a new places to do them in. this is not a zero-sum game. we're not competing against each

other for a pie. our job is to grow the pie and make everybody wealthier. not for the finale of time to get richer and wealthy but the wealth in the sense of making community, the world stronger and healthier. for lack of a better word, better. and that's what we strive to do. >> bullet, appreciate very much you giving us your perspective and i think if given us a great oversight of what your perspective far, i want to thank every for coming today. and lloyd, thank you very much. >> thank you. [applause] >> oh, my favorite. thank you spent a map of the district of columbia. so thank you all for coming. lloyd, thank you very much. >> thank you. >> several live events to tell you about this morning. the house natural resources subcommittee on national parks, boards and public lands looks at wildfire prevention and for

still. that you on c-span2 at nine eastern. spent "national journal" hosted a forum this week with women leaders in politics, business and education. over the next several hours you will hear panels on innovation, demographic changes, and businesses owned by women. we do want this to be a lively discussion at the watch itself how we're doing this corporate we welcome your comments, questions, suggestions via twitter at hash tag in j. women 2020. that's hash tag in j. women 2020. in addition to taking questions via twitter, will also have audience q&a portions throughout the program.

this event would not be possible without the generous support of google and the american beverage association. here this morning with susan neely compress and chief executive officer to offer some remarks to you all. prior to joining a day, she was one of the architects of the nation's first department of homeland security but she also held senior positions in congress and in the office of governor terry branstad about the most recent shooting chair of the u.s. chamber of commerce association committee of the 100. susan. [applause] >> good morning, everyone. the american beverage association is a proud underwriter of this very important and interesting conference, and i want to do two things this morning in the brief time that i have here at the podium before we get into the really interesting part of the day. one is to give you an

unabashedly comment about some of the companies i work for, grants that you know well like coca-cola and pepsico. i would say that they really are great forces for the fans that of women in this country. pepsico is chaired by one of the 4% of women that are running for 500 companies, the chairman of coca-cola runs can personally runs an executive committee that is trying to figure out how to advance women inside the company. of course, both a part of united nations global compact to empower women through business around the globe and on and on. i guess my main point is that as we think today about how to continue to advance women, keep in mind the private sector, companies like the ones i represent, google and others, as a great force for good. as part of our strategy for advancements. the second thing wanted is to give a charge to this group.

as someone who is older than a lot of people in the room, i started here in washington in the late '70s working for my congressman from iowa as one of the first things i did was join the capitol hill women's political caucus. three years later when i went back to iowa to work on campaign, i think the same day signing a six month lease for an apartment to take me through the campaign, i joined the iowa women's political caucus. those were the things that you did in small bands of women to try to make advances. here we are, decades later with a whole room of women and a line at the very, very powerful women. my charge to the group is to not figure out how we overcome the barriers to progress, i think maybe that's the wrong question. i think the question we should ask ourselves is how do we harness the considerable power and influence we have as consumers, as voters, as employers, as employees, as leaders to make changes for good, not just for women but for

all of society. because i'm always an optimist, i like to look for signs of progress. some going to close with one story about my son who is 12 years old right now, but four years ago when he was eight, in the middle of the hotly contested presidential primary he told he wanted to bring a young friend of his to my office and give them a tour. i thought, really? okay. is always nice when your son wants to do something with you. it to work, here's my mom back to manchester own bathroom in her office and here is or flatscreen tv. and here's the pictures of her with the former president of the united states, one of whom is a former president bill clinton. so that night when we took the other little guy home, ran out of the car, ran at the steps, burst into his house and yelled mom, she has a picture with hillary clinton's husband. [laughter] and i said to my friend, the mothers i said he has a good mom

was giving him good perspective on these things but i figure if we can't figure how to harness our power industry, it's always the next generation. so to all the good moms and grandmas and good sisters and friends and leaders in this room, i look forward to our discussions, and conversation today, and all that we can do together. thank you very much. [applause] >> great. we're just going to get the panel lined up if i want to quickly give you a rundown of this morning's program which will feature five panel discussions that cover everything from innovation, demographics, entrepreneurship, politics and developing future lives. we will also have three conversations, including house democratic leader nancy pelosi and exit interview with kay bailey hutchison and a final conversation will be a luncheon interview with foundry gerrit. we do hope you'll join us for

the entire day. and onto the first panel discussion on imagination and innovation. i guess they can change the world. is also a companion article to this section in this weeks issue of "national journal." moderating our first panel is nancy cook enjoyed her our current 11, doctor carina edmonds, and michelle rhee, co that of students first. nancy. >> thanks so much. in a magazine last week each of these three amazing women outlined the different ideas that for innovation and their various sectors. so i wonder if each of you could just offer three or four sentences about what you propose and what you think would be innovative to transform the military, the energy sector and education. anu, you want to start? >> in my work we feel was sexist

commission and sexual violence in the u.s. military and all of the aftermath after women veterans in particular but also those affected by the crises in the military. it's not really rocket science but, unfortunately, what we see oftentimes with the agencies and government in general is that when you have these scandals interrupting like the last one where drone structures are charged with everything from sexual misconduct to rape of 31 women recruits, lots of young women, the leaders oftentimes respond in a very backwards way, which is to offer segregated men and women in the military and son of returning to the age old barriers to advancement for women in military. and so what we have seen, and a lot of research and analysis is when i should do the opposite which is increase women's leadership in all kinds of

security, whether defense contracting, like we all know black water, right? we've talked about ideas like paint water. imagine having women defense contractors serving women who are being raised in a convent for instance. we were really kind of pushing the boundaries on what could be possible around the world. u.s. peacekeepers, all women peacekeepers deployed all over the world. some are mixed gender and some or all female units, and they've held future sexual assaults in a number of host conflict areas, including haiti after the earthquake. these examples have drastically improved global peacekeeping and security operations for many populations. including the u.s. military. >> karina, what about the department of energy? sort of a big government agency, what you think we could do about sort of innovative in that

sector? >> first of all i would like to say good morning to you think the "national journal" for putting together such a great program. so what i've done and what might essay focuses on is the support of the importance of support for science and research. because of the amazing innovation that we are born out of the basic research. so i talk about a lot of the things that we have today that we take for granted that were based on government funding. and with the economy the way it is and budgets being cut, i make the case of why it is we need to continue to invest in science and research. and so i talk about all the great things that we current have available and just possibilities because standard of living of any society is based on materials that is available to the society. and for instance, the advantages were making in solar, with i believe we now have liquid silicone that will be solar

panels that we can use. i talk about truly having, being able to power our own mobile devices and control them with a wink of an eye which i don't think from the things that can be done probably not in a commercial scale. and all for the benefits that we receive gps, i'm sure we're all very aware of gps to how we ever got around without them i have no idea. unfortunately, we also become very rely on them. i can barely get there from my house just because you kind of autopilot. those are the kind of things. like i said, for us to give to appreciate the investments that were made, again, gps is being example that we use, that was research that was done for the military, to guide nuclear missiles and now it's in our cars but the fact that we all have cameras in our cell phones, that was nasa looking for very cheap low-cost lightweight

cameras if they could put in space to look far out in a very bright sky. so i can those are the type of things. and we can take our current status as a literate and innovation for granted because there's lots of other countries that are running really quickly from us. again, we can't rest on our laurels. we have to keep moving forward and continuing to push the frontiers of research. >> okay. michelle, what about you? how do you think, we push innovation in education which is something everyone thinks their family with. we've all been to school but maybe we are not my with all the different policies. >> so i think what most, there are a lot of things that have to be innovative and proven education but what people usually think about that question, automatically their minds move to technology in the classroom which i think is something that absolutely has to be bolstered. buyout we chose to fight about something that's a little bit

more my fellow panelist pointed commonsense, which is how we pay teachers. what we know based on the research and what we also know based on our experiences as women and moms is the most importantly i turn the impacts the experience that are children of every day in schools is the quality of teachers. and the research bears that out, and that is not about class size. it's not about technology. it's not about how state-of-the-art building is, what is going in that your child the most is the teacher quality. yet when we look at how we pay and compensate teachers, it absolutely does not add to ensuring that we have the most high quality teachers in the classroom. we have an antiquated lockstep pay schedule where most teachers nowadays start at about somewhere between 40, $45,000 a year.

after five or six years they're making a few thousand dollars more. i think that we have to turn the profession into one where teachers are really recognized and rewarded for the work that they are doing, and we also have to recognize the fact that what they are doing is so important in terms of society over all. so we really believe that the most effective teachers off to be paid a whole lot more money, and a whole lot more money certainly been less effective teachers are making. we put in place a new low performance pay system in washington, d.c. when i was a chance were here, where teachers who were beginning their third year of teaching, so that just been teaching for two years prior to that, but they were teaching in a high need school in a high need subject area and they were a highly effective teacher, they could make about $100,000 heading into the third

year. so that sort of dynamic i think is the kind of dynamic that we have to be looking for. and with all due respect to professional athletes, given that my husband isn't x. professional athlete, there is no comparison between the value that you ask of society as a basketball player than a teacher and. [applause] so if we're paying -- playing our -- paying our best basketball players million dollars a year, that's what we ought to be paying our best educated. >> karina and to show you both product money and funding to one of the of education, a student and innovation additional i often think about it being a mindset. what you think is more important to foster innovation. is it having the money to back up those ideas or is it changing a culture or fostering that?

>> in education is definitely more about the culture. for decades in this country, what has sort of been for each is that when you go to improve education is more money. but, in fact, if you look at the statistics and data, over the last 30 years in this country we have more than doubled, almost triple the amount of money that we're spending per child on public education. and yet the result has been absolutely stagnant. washington, d.c., is a case in point. we are spending more money per child than almost any other areas in the nation are not only with the results dismal, but the level of innovation that was happening in the district was dismal as well. i think that interestingly enough because economic times are so tight right now and because school budgets unfortunately are being cut, what is causing is more people to be more innovative about how to spend those dollars to some

of the most interesting innovations we have seen in education has come out of california, because the amount of money that is left to classrooms in california is so low people say we can't do things in the same way we've done them in the past. we can't have 24 kids in one classroom with one teacher because the budget is just not allowing for that so how can we think about organizing and structuring education give it. so i definitely think that lease in education it is really a mindset issue. >> for me it is both. i mean, there is a cultural change that has to occur. i've been very involved in the start of america effort out of the administration, and making these you for folks to start companies out of taking the technology that is develop a dilapidated is out to the marketplace. and so in supporting of entrepreneurship, and having people recognize that it's okay to fail, taking risk.

entrepreneurial activities are high risk activity, and having the ability to take a chance, take some technology and try to move it out from the lab is extreme importantly but you also need capital, and so there's a number of programs that have been a place to small business administration and otherwise to enable, which is pass this new legislation jobs act which are going to provide some tax breaks for investors aren't investing in these new companies. so for both, and another thing i do, i work closely with the national labs at the department of energy and there is a culture for the scientist to recognize -- that they're not just focus, just doing research for this one project but what other problems out there can the scientific discoveries answer. and so for me it is twofold but internally it is very much -- that it's okay for us to venture

and fund these technologies for instance. one of the big issues, folks think, based in something gets develop an 11 it goes right to market and they're such a long and rose path to the marketplace. especially in the case of energy. because it's really difficult to it's difficult at any scale, but in the case of energy, energy pretty much is commodity. people don't really, for the most part -- people didn't care whether it is coming from solar, wind or dirty coal. you just wonder electricity. for those of you and the greater washington area in the last storm storm, you definitely sympathize to i sympathize with you because you didn't have electricity. like i said come in energy it's really difficult because the market is not there. new technologies coming out of the market have to can be with existing technologies which are relatively cheap. so that's one thing. energy is not like i.t. as you

know. if you're starting a computer company or a social media company, you can do it out of your home, your garage. in the case of energy it's typically capital intensive industry, and so and then to scale up that is needed. so can i would say it's both. that's we work to address. >> anu, i want to ask you because you're some familiar with the military. if you are working in that sort of hierarchy, how do you introduce innovation to something that you've been around for centuries? >> right. one of the things we face in terms of progressing the military forward, moving into the 21st century, is the issue of military deference by the government, by the american people. the u.s. military kind of occupies the ex-alteplase and americans imagination for a variety of reasons. there's a lot of good to that but there's also a lot of bad to that. and when you have pervasive

discrimination or sexual assaults of service members and very limited access to redress for the service members on the inside, we see a huge cultural problem, which cannot be done on inside the military leaders cannot fully not fixes. completely incapable as we've seen in texas. and, unfortunately, what happens is the dynamic between kind of the vast majority of americans who are civilians, 99% of americans do not serve in the military, less than 1% ask are serving in the military right now you're it there's this further isolation, those in the branch to the vast majority of americans. but you see this in government were presidential, president is the commander-in-chief and yet there's so much deference to military leadership, on issues which don't require that deference to we are not talk about battlefield leadership. we are talking about widescale

gross civil rights or human rights violations. and so it's critical that other agencies, congress which passes oversight of the military needs to do far more every day to ensure that military leaders at all levels are enforcing policy and making sure folks get punished if they are harassing or assaulting one another. other agencies like doj, like state department. their silence on the military that doesn't need to be. that doesn't need to be a sort of black and white mentality. we can all be much more interested, and we need to be because we've got hundreds of thousands of veterans who reenter, reintegrating to our community, and they're part of our schools and work environment and hospitals and so on. you know, have enormous amount of skill, and also just character they bring to the american society.

it's important we stopped during the military and exalting it to a place where we can't have this conversation. >> that raises an interesting point. i always wondered if you're trying come if you foster innovation, gene to bring in sort of new outside people as your suggesting with these, or you know, can you do with all the people on board? michelle, you have experience in washington school system spent i think there has to be a mix. my experience in d.c. was that there were lots of people within the system who have been in a system for decades who knew what was wrong, it seemed all the mistakes that have been made, and to assume that all of the new innovation and ideas had to come from outside i think would have sort of not given shows do you respect the people who have seen all the trials and tribulations, and really had ideas about how to change those things. that said, i also think that we

often as educators think that only we can fix the system, and no one else can kind of way in. and we found that the absolutely wrong. one of the things that i did those are interesting was i talk to people on different sectors. one of the people i talked with was a professor of economics at harvard, who had been thinking about how to help school districts take on the greatest challenges. this was a guy who is sort of sitting in an ivory tower, an economist. and i said to him, one of our biggest issues is middle schools. middle school seemed to be where we are losing a lot of kids because our elementary schools are better but when you get your high school, you know, things are really going downhill and so middle schools is sort of trnsition time where we don't know why we're losing the kids. so he came up with this idea for

a program that would pay middle schoolers to do well in school. and so if you pay the school and if you wear your uniform and you got good grades, you could make up to $100 every few weeks. it was a program called capital gains. we implement the program and it was fascinating, the pushback that account. i mean, i got letters, all the enough some people think you're crazy, what are you doing what i remember talking to this one gentleman in particular. he said it is a sad day, chancellor rhee, when you have to pay children to do what they're supposed to be doing anyway. i think that sort of, the mentality of people have counted everything the way we did 50 years ago. and i said no, actually yesterday was a sad day when a% of our eighth graders were on grade level in mathematics, and we worked trying to get anything

out of the box to solve the problem. i said, and if you think incentives and education are the new and somehow terrible thing, got to the suburbs were for every day you bring home on your report card the kids get $20, you get a shiny red convertible when they turn 16. i mean, there are incentives in education out there, so why shouldn't we have incentives in education here in the city where quite frankly is every incentive in the world out on the streets our kids to do wrong things. why not give them some incentive in schools to do the right things? and so, and again that came from an economist who is just think about things in a very nice simple toy, how do we get kids to do what we want. money. >> washington such a unique town. were talking of his earlier, transfer, when we are waiting. you just moved here from california recently.

i wonder, this is a question for anyone, how do you foster innovation here in d.c. where, particularly in such a partisan environment, not like silicon valley, it's not like boston with research universities. how do you do it here? >> i had that experience because having joined the department of energy for the first time i tried to introduce a new contractual vehicle, the way that coming, the private sector can come work with our lives. they have two choices. when a squad of research agreement and another is to work for others. and for years industries has this doesn't workforce but these are not industry standards and a truly difficult, and so i pushed to get a new vehicle on the books but it was extremely difficult, like michelle said that our people of been around for decades and have been doing things a certain way and this is the way we did it and this is all we did. you know, what's wrong with this. it's very risk averse. i had to understand the drivers

and why it was so resistance to change. people are comfortable with what they know, anytime you introduce something that's unknown or could be risky, you know, they are just not want to accept the. so you have to move very cautiously, very slowly and bring in all of the stakeholders. anyone that this new contractual vehicle could possibly affect. and you know it took some time but am happy to say that we are able to do that. and part of that was pointing back to the administration of him saying look, we want to do more, we want to make sure that rick kaplan on investments that we're making. in my case the federal labs, how do we enable more industry to come in and work with lab. and it's a two-way street. our scientist at the lab came just as much as the competition coming in and sharing their problems with us, as we do from getting that real, the real problems that injuries she faces a wicked looking at a research

agenda which is in what other problems could be solved. >> very good. we're going to take questions in two minutes so people want to start thinking about questions. i wonder if somebody could share a success story that you think we tried to be innovative even if it did work and sort of what were the lessons that you learned from that. in government. >> i'll start. i will share a successor which many of you probably read about, but one that was in operations afghanistan circuit was recorded military leadership that men in uniform could not do everything they needed in terms of intelligence gathering, and so-called winning hearts and minds, interacting with local populations in iraq and afghanistan because of local cultural norms barriers between men and women, you know, from everything from really through humanitarian assistance to interrogations. so it was through the id of the

young officers, and -- suggested the radical idea of taking women marines, women soldier, having them do this interfacing with local tribal elders and women and interacting with women in their homes, talking to children. and it's a much larger conversation but in the in the female engagement teams have been a huge success in the operations afghanistan in particular, and nato eventually develop its own team. and its extraordinary because women in the military were exposed in terms of their own career progression, exposure to combat and proceed with the assignments they've never been before able to engage in. and so it was extraordinary for the entire military but what the marine corps is doing that sort of scaling back these assignments and is not making them permanent. you see sort of a good idea being tested out and affect what was, you could score, these

junior officers were kind of cat and every step of the way by sort of middle management, senior officers, way too radical, way too radical, not going to work. of course, the work. women were able to this job better than men. and so we can learn from that lesson. i don't mean that sort of data i mean literally ruin not allowed into these communities at all. and affect elders who were men obviously were interacting with these women marines much more effectively. for better or for worse they trusted them. >> we are ready to take a couple of questions if people, we have some might ask, mic runners if anyone has questions. people are still thinking? okay. sorry. i can't see. there's a hand right there.

>> i'm not here with an organization, but i do -- from new york and that's an amazing is that i must say. how much people admire in the office. my question actually is about an article that became very famous recently, called women can have it all. -- women can't have it all. it was a very controversial article just by the title alone. and i haven't read the entire thing. i've read excerpts, but i can't decide for myself if it excessive or true, and i wanted to know your opinions on that as powerful women in your field. >> are you guys the mother with the article? >> i've of those articles because they are books. over three nights i managed to get to it. i have some expense in is a big i should have three kids. i acted in a think it is offensive. i think she makes valid points in the and that we need to be

honest. everyone's situation is a different and it's really difficult to make generalizations, and she really, it was a really personal article and she talks about her particular situation. and it's difficult all around. i had a good friend who would always, like in terms of if you decide don't have a family, in terms of timing, and when is the right time, and a friend of mine told me, her mother said the best time to children is when you have them. so that's the vice i give to you. >> i thought the article was interesting, and i have two kids myself, a very sore demanding career, and the way that i see it is that it's not so much that women can have it all. it's just that you might not be able to have it all exactly the way that you sort of envisioned it to be.

because i do have my kids still and i do have a job and i have all of these things. and i think one of the things went to realize is, as women to get away from the fairytale forbidden kind of stuff, and just realize, everything is going to be different for each of us. i was very interested to see all the -- the new yahoo! ceo and she is pretty. i would probably work through the whole thing. she got criticized by saying that from some quarters were saying you shouldn't say that, you shouldn't -- that might not be the right thing necessarily for her. being a person who was nursing and typing with the other hand, i mean, i bonded with my kids, my kids, i served kept them at work.

that's what worked for me and what i need to sort of maintaining my sanity. and it's going to be different for all of us i think that we have to we have to sort of get away from the notion that it's going to be same for all of us. we are all different, and so we have to sort break out of that box i think. >> i don't know if any of you saw the airport photo of women -- about a month ago, huge discussion, scandals discussion in the military about, you know, half a breast being exposed in uniform. it was a very typical although, when i was in the marine corps, to be pregnant was like a curse. in fact, i talk to women in different branch because the colonel i talked to recently who was come even at six months pregnant and definitely showing i think it everything she could not to tell her fellow officers that she was pregnant. this is a high ranking officer, because it would have cursed her career. it just is looked down upon, even if there's no practical

implications to you think i do, like it would take you out of fear or this or that. it is to look down upon. it as an entirely sexist culture. so like the feeling that you can be sexualized in that way, sort of brings down the marine corps or the military, whatever branch of service you are in. it's something that again normalizing women in uniform, it's something that has to happen. it just has to happen. >> i think we had another question. i saw someone with her hand up over there. >> you have, mine is a follow-up oon the pulse but while agree with you michelle that it's going to be different for every person can we live in a country with pathetic policies on maternity leave. department of energy, part of the federal government i think correct me if i'm wrong has no maternity leave. it's just unpaid family medical leave act, as are most i believe private employers. and so i think the criticism of the new yahoo! ceo, to whom i

wish all the very best, is partly that in a context where we are very much behind in this country and allowing women to have choices that allow them to be innovative, that allow them to be leaders, it is troubling, you know, it's nice to be able to optionally work through your maternity leave if you're healthy, if you have a single baby, you know, but for many women there is not that option to be working part-time, and what do we do to craft policies, not just in maternity but other areas help to ensure that women have the choices that can help women with discrimination? >> i would say this, she was asked what she was going to do but she wasn't asked what her thoughts were about what they maternity leave at yahoo! should be or whether it should be nationwide. and for that i think is what the

difference is, is she was asked what she thinks maternity leave should be at yahoo!, and she said everyone needs to work through their maternity leave, that would be problematic. but the fact that she was asked a question about which person was going to do and that that somehow was going to -- translate into sort of general policy should be, i think that's what the problem was, at least in my mind. >> i had my children before i got to the department of energy but it is very similar. i had eight weeks. and so yeah, yeah to eight weeks and you have to take your medical leave or whatever. but i realize looking back i am probably, i should say things are changing. i was excited, policy would allow you to delay like, if you're a researcher, a year for family and applies to both men and women. i think it's important that any policy that we have for childcare should apply to both men and women, you know. there's a lot more men now

taking paternity leave and saw. i think that's important. so, you know, nsf, insurance and the a person of a part of the ring i didn't go -- biplanes getting a graduate degree with that, that the family was really important to me. that's the other thing. i wanted children. some people choose not to have children and that's okay. and so i think for me personally i thought it was going to be very difficult to be in academia, causally changing your lunch and going out to grand central. that's an area that we made great strides i believe in and there's a lot of universities now that are delaying the tenure decision. you get to do it again for both men and women, that if you have a family automatically you get a year or something to delay that, which is, i know at least in that area things are changing in academia. but i agree there's a lot of work that needs to be done in terms of policy over all. >> unfortunately we have to wrap things up. we are on a tight schedule here but thanks so much for your

questions and thanks to this great panel. this was a really great idea of. [inaudible] >> our next panel discussion is women in numbers, an american story. joining us on stage momentarily for this conversation our kellyanne conway, founder and president of the polling company, and anna greenberg, senior vice president and principal of greenberg quinlan rosner research. moderate this discussion is jill lawrence, "national journal"'s managing editor of politics. >> thanks to much for coming, and we have a great panel here of two women who know more about women and their attitudes and the demographics than almost anyone. they have been holding for years. and they just discovered in the green room that they're working opposite each other into the highest profile races in the country this year.

and anna is pulling for chrissy vilsack was running against teaching this point is being done by kellyanne. at the same is true for michele bachmann you may have heard of. kellyanne is pulling for her and anna is pulling for opponent. so that such as it is going to be about politics and we're going to talk about demographics. we're going to talk about messaging and will probably touch on politics. so let's start about talk about the recession which is kind of the overriding this year. and anna, why don't you talk about how women are faring compared to men? we know that women earn less than men and they work more on state and local governments that have been hit hard so how are they doing? >> it's interesting. i me, one of the things noted early on with this recession and someone is impacting men more than women, if elected and appointed a and job losses because of the decline in manufacturing and a range of other issues, but the other

thing to note in the recovery albeit slow, that i can men are better than women. part of it has to do with you look at the stimulus dollars and those sorts of efforts to a lot of those, the kind of shovel-ready jobs that tend to be jobs that men are more likely to fill than women but moreover, because of the layoff in the public sector, primarily in my teaching, for example, women are more likely to be public employees than men are pigs we have the sort of situation where men were more soda immediately affected by the decline in employment, but in recovery, men are doing better than women here but generally speaking, whether in a recession or not women tend to do less well than men, earn less than in both because of wage discrimination and because of the occupations women are in but also because women tend to be, or more likely to be an economically vulnerable situations, for instance, women are much more likely to be single parents than men are. in fact, about 20% of all

unmarried women are single parents and we know that single parents are the most economically vulnerable of all in this society so in general, leaving aside the recession, women do less well than men. >> you did some research in 2010 after the elections about how women voted, and what has changed in our attitudes? what you think the continued recession is going to do in terms of how they perceive the situation and what choices they make in the fall? ..

>> and so the real question for 2012 is demographically and attitudinally and as voters waverly in november -- behaviorally in november, will 2012 be more an expansion of 2010 where women favored republicans over democrats for the first time since pollsters have been tracking it, or will it be a rush -- return to 2008 where president obama got 56% of the female vote? the issues matrix is much more 2010 than 2012 in that women still tell pollsters jobs, unemployment, economy are the top issues. they also talk about education, health care, a little bit about immigration. i think energy is bubbling up, if you will, as a really important issue to them. but it's also seen as an economic issue. it starts with gas prices, but it extends into domestic energy exploration, a national security issue and job creation, frankly. look, women, of course, it was

called the, it was called the man session, and now it's called the hecovery for a reason. 87% of the jobs in construction and manufacturing that were lost at the beginning of the recession were held by men. and 50% of all job losses by 2007 had been in those two industries. and so you do see that some the sectors where women overpopulate as workers -- education, health care, government workers -- they really haven't been hard hit. starting to change a little bit. but at the beginning of the recession, those industries weren't as hard hit. so women were able to hang on to their jobs. but women discovered that they had either to stay in jobs they didn't particularly like, extend their hours, so i think there's been an increasing financial sophistication among women. women can do the math, and i think the candidates that respect women can do the math

either as entrepreneurs or inspiring entrepreneurs that they have married now their kitchen table economic savvy with an appreciation for and an understanding of macroeconomics like the debt and deficit. i'm amazed women talk about debt and deficit, but they do. >> this is the most in-demand demographic group this year. they're in play. women. and so there's a lot of back and forth. and even among women the most is what some people call the walmart moms. women who have kids under 18, they're focused on their own households, they're not particularly focused on current events. so, anna, what is the role, and what's the best argument, an obama or a romney can make to them? >> sure. well, i would start by saying that i'm always, i am always interested when we talk about women as a group since they're

the majority of the population. and, obviously, the differences among women where much more -- are much more important than the commonality, at least when it comes to voting decisions. it is true that women are more likely to be what we call swing or persuadable voters, but you have to look underneath the surface, and it tends to be better educated women, for example, and older women, you know, tend to be more, you know -- know more about politics, more engaged and tend to be a little less persuadable. and if you look at younger and less educated, including if you look at the so-called walmart mom, you know, there's a group of women who have a lot of demands on their time, they're consumed with surviving day-to-day. politics is relatively low on their list of things to pay attention to, and they don't see the connection with how it immediately impacts their lives. arguably, some of the more recent budget cuts at the state level certainly have impacted

education, and people have seen that. but that's really the only area when i do focus groups where i see a discussion of cause and effect. that's really the only place, it's education. and so this is a group that, you know, tends to be a little more swing, tends to move around a little bit more depending on what's going on in the overall environment, whether if it's a political wave year. and so as kellyanne said, and she's right, in 2010 nationally republicans won 49% of women vote ors and democrats won 48%, and that's, you know, it's historic. it's pretty unprecedented. i don't think that's going to happen this year. presidential years are different than midterm elections, and this was a midterm election that was a republican wave. i think this'll be a very competitive election. i don't think it's a wave year. i think it's very competitive, and i think you're going to see a huge amount of resources being targeted at these women whether

it's unmarried women who are really struggling financially, whether it's sort of married, blue collar walmart women sort of talking about their challenges, even, you know, older women, again, who tend to be a little left wing in thinking about the role of medicare and social security in their lives. i think you're going to see a huge amount of discussion about women's economic circumstances from both the candidates. >> so there is a huge amount of discussion going on in some places. we know because we're near virginia about the, quote, war on women. and a cluster of issues that involve contraception, abortion, even the democrats are trying to include the lily ledbetter fair pay act and trying to get republican candidates to commit for or against it. kellyanne what -- i mean, does this have any impact at all on women who, you know, particularly those who have economic problems? is -- when we're talking about races that are this close, is this a problem? >> i think you see it reflected in the polling data that that's the dog that didn't hunt after a

while. it's great to rye to -- i think some people it's a good political tactical move to try to scare women, but with why are we messaging, why does one party seem to be messaging to women from the waist down only? [laughter] i appreciate people who talk to women head, heart, mind, body, soul. and i would like to see anybody's polling, and i mean anybody's polling in the last five years, let alone last five days or months, that shows that contraception and abortion are anywhere in the top five. they similarly are not -- simply are not, and everybody knows it. a number of women have been insulted by that because it's fine to talk about any public policy issue, but to pretend we have the luxury in this nation as women who are incredibly economically vulnerable, and it's not just the lower educated, lower income. the economic vulnerability for women that's always been there but they mask very well they can't hide anymore because it's about hanging on to your house

and your job and affording not life's luxuries, forget that. food and fuel, the daily consumables. and so with the average woman really trying to think about how to afford the daily consumables like food and fuel, can you eke out some kind of summer vacation by car this year? can you treat the kids to a ballet lesson or, you know, the $150 you have to pay for soccer registration? to think they are going to stop and focus on contraception and abortion is, frankly, insulting. there's a vote today in the united states house, and it's about the fact that d.c., where we're sitting, has absolutely no abortion policy whatsoever. there's no abortion law in d.c. so this law that's being considered in the house today is -- i never know the names of it -- capable pain law, and it's, basically, end abortion at 20 weeks. so there are people who believe there's a war on women, sex election and no abortion law,

but there's a different war on an unborn baby -- >> [inaudible conversations] >> i think you may have a few things to say. >> respectfully, i disagree, kellyanne. there is no question if you say what's the biggest question facing you in your life, women are going to say the economy, struggling to get by day that day. but as an indicator of the values of candidates or elected officials, these issues are really important. and so it says something about women's right to self-termination and, you know, putting abortion aside, certainly when it comes to birth control, it is noncontroversial that women should have the right to control their access to birth control. as you -- >> [inaudible] >> as you know, steve king thinks we should repeal griswold v. connecticut and let the state regulate birth control in married couples. there is a very strong belief in

sort of self-determination in that -- termination in that aspect. when it comed to planned parenthood, people see it as a health clinic, so it's mystifying why we would defund these organizations. even when you -- and i've done this in surveying the public -- an experiment where you leave in and leave out the fact that some planned parenthood clinics provide abortions doesn't make any difference in people's opinion about supporting planned parenthood. it's not just lily ledbetter, it's looking at, for example, scott walker who under the cover of night basically makes it harder for women to sue as well as the layoffoffs and cuts in wisconsin disproportionately impacting women. there is a narrative about women and definitely termination and their ability to be treated economically that is a powerful indicator of whether it's a replain candidate you're running

against -- republican candidate you're running against. in every survey i do, it is one of the strongest attacks on republicans. so that's a very different issue than whether or not it's the most important issue in someone's life. if it's an indicator of how a party think abouts about and treats women. >> let's talk about what some of the shows, what some of the polling shows a about the marriage gap and the gender gap. why is there a marriage gap? why do married women prefer republicans, and maybe, kellyanne, would you like to address that? >> sure. i wrote a book several years ago, and we have an entire chapter called what women really want. we were hoping men thought it was a book about sex and run out and buy it and after thaw bought the book, be very dispinted.

but we talked about the marriage gap then. you have so many more unmarried americans, particularly unmarried women. and this generally refers to single, never-married women more than it does divorced or widowed. and, you know, by the age of 25, years ago, a woman pretty much in this country had said i do. and now at the age of 30 a lot of women are saying, well, i probably will, and at 35 some say, heck, i probably won't. if the republican party's going to wait for the young to get old and the single to get married, they're going to miss a lot of voters. but what happens is unmarried women tend to be heads of household either with or without children in the household, one income, much more economically vulnerable just as a statistical fact. and they tend to be younger, and, um, those two different influencers have them look at the government more as sort of a safety net and a helping hand than an obstacle, for example.

i've long told the republican party you want more women to think conservatively and vote republican, they do after they get one, two, three or four of the magic ms, marriage, munch kins, mutual funds in whatever order. but younger people tend to think they're much higher in the polling with respect to contraception, abortion, marriage than they are, than married women who tend to think more about economics, jobs, health care, education. >> a question for anna then. can these issues that we were talking about, these contraceptive-type issues, younger women don't go to the polls in as many, in as much volume as older women. so, i mean, is this a motivator? something democrats can use to get people to the polls? >> let me just talk about the marriage gap for a minute. totally agree with kellyanne here. one of the things that's interesting about the marriage gap that we are, fewer and fewer people are getting married,

right? that's the other trend. and if you make a choice not to get married, that says something about you politically. what you find is it's true that people do get somewhat more conservative as they get older, especially after they have kids. but that being said, people who get married later are fundamentally different than people who get married younger. so it's not like you get married and all of a sudden you become a republican, or you get divorcedd and become a democrat, right? if you choose to get divorced, those -- they tend to be associated with being more liberal, if you will. and if you get married younger and be if you stay married and don't get divorced even if that might be something that, you know, that tends to say something about you politically. so it's not sort of inevitable that once people, women get married that they become more conservative. that gap is going to exist, and one of the things we should look at long term is -- actually, gives me an idea. i want to ask people at what age they got married because i'll bet that is a strong indicator of what they look like politically.

a question of motivation, look, again, i agree with kellyanne, i don't think these issues are top of mind and necessarily drive anybody but people who are kind of activists on both sides to the polls. but if you are looking at a choice you have to make between two candidates and or too trying to understand what their values and priorites are, and if you are an independent, a moderate, and this person sort of says, you know, i think we should restrict access to birth control or i think we should make it harder to sue around weight discrimination, those are important indicators of somebody's values. it's part of an overall story that you're going to tell about, you know, your opponent. >> let's talk about the underrepresentation of women in office just for a minute. only 17% of congress is women on both sides. and 12% of governors, i think. how can women change that, and what would change if they did? >> i think it's only going to get worse because the only old

saying to run for office you have to have fire in your belly, you also have to have fire in your throat and be willing to sacrifice so much personally with or without a family. put so much of yourself out there publicly, probably sacrifice what you can earn elsewhere and have a good portion of the population cynically look at you through a jaundiced lens even before you get started. less so for women candidates. generally looked upon as congenitally more incorruptible and, you know, the old saying you can get three women -- if you got three women together in your neighborhood wherever you're from, you could probably solve a problem faster than congress gets done in two years. women believe that, and we see it every day. but the underrepresentation, jill, is -- politics is actually a huge outlier in terms of women's progress just in the numbers. women really are, continue to populate in very strong numbers. great progress in some of these major industries. and then even in management

positions in nonindustries, you know, in sort of wage workers. but politics is a place where women feel like they don't necessarily have access to the same money, access to the same people, and they don't necessarily look at holding office as their greatest contribution to the body politic or to their communities. and i think there's a real -- but let's be honest. women as big majority voters in the democratic primary in 2008, in the end didn't vote for hillary clinton over barack obama, and later that year voted against sarah palin 56-43. >> okay. let's hear from anna on this question. >> with well, you know, i think that the issue is as much about the structure of our government as it is about any individual fire in someone's belly or disgust with the system. so in parliamentary systems where parties submit lists of candidates, there are more women because they put more women on

the list. when women run and run in competitive districts, they win as often as men do. so a big part is the recruitment and cultivation. and there certainly are, i mean, emily's list, which i'm sure you know, supports pro-of choice, democratic women, but they also have a program that brings up women at the legislative level to sort of groom them to run for higher office, so they support them at the beginning of their career when they're running for state legislature, and some of those women hopefully run for governor, congress or senate. so i think a big part is the political will of the party and sort of the effort they put into recruitment and making sure women run in competitive districts and aren't sacrificial lambs. and the data are pretty clear that when women raise as much money in competitive districts, they win. there is no evidence that women vote for women because of women. women are partisan, they're ideological. democratic women don't vote for republican women because they disagree on the issues, and vice

versa. and i'm always mystified why anyone would think women vote for women. it's very unlikely that a democratic woman or republican woman would cross party lines simply because thai women. >> so how do you explain clinton/obama? >> first of all, she barely lost. let's be clear. [inaudible conversations] and there was action between age and gender. i think that las a lot to do -- has a lot to do with generationally. women's movement, those women tend to be now in their 50s, 60s, 90s, and younger women sort of grew up in a different time around feminism and the women's movement, and women are much less likely to say it's important to vote for a woman because he's a woman. >> i think it had a lot to do with what we're going to see this election cycle in november which is, um, women tend to graf said towards the candidate they see as more optimistic and

positive, and that's been true since 1960 in every presidential election since 1972 when richard nixon as the incumbent president won. i don't think anyone confuses him with being positive, optimistic and sunny. [laughter] he had a weak opponent, we were at war in vietnam. but this is a different obama in 2012 than hillary in 2008. they're all scorched earth negative, and it's going to be a fascinating test to me to see how women react to a lack of positive, optimism and hopefulness in which i believe they gravitate -- >> okay. we're moving deep into politics. of. [laughter] let's go to some questions from the audience. waiting for a mic. >> my name's jennifer, and i'm from st. johns college, and my question is for ms. conway. i'm just wondering, earlier you said that women as with any

other demographic are more concerned with economic issues and assuming their focus on contraceptive issues is insulting. i'm wondering how you think that considering the -- [inaudible] even giving up for adoption, do you think contraception can be separate from economic issues? >> do i think contraception can be -- [applause] >> no, i don't. you can get the pill at target for $9. so if we're going to wage -- if we're going to say les a war on women -- that there's a war on women because it seems expedient to do it, all the while masking the economic vulnerabilities women have faced, then we're not being fair to women. we're pretending they only care about contraception and abortion. we're not being fair to what i know about women. young, old, black, white, asian, hispanic, midwestern, southern, and that's that they can walk, chew gum and juggle all at the

same time. they can talk about economic issues, contraception and abortion issues, health care and education issues, foreign policy and defense. i don't want to look at women through a limited public policy and political lens because somebody wants to score a couple cheap political points. and adoption, contraception, all of this should be discussed public policy wise, there's no question. but that particular issue started out about conscious protections, and when it's really about contraception versus congress congress, then conscious, then it's a fair fight. when it's about forcing universities to drop health coverage for women your age because they don't want -- this goes against what they believe. we ought to be respectful of that. >> anna? >> i just think you set up a straw man when you characterize it that way and suggest that people who care about these issues are trying to suggest that women care about nothing else and there's a limited

agenda. i just think it's a straw man. there isn't anybody who characterizes it that way, and as an example, if you look at planned parenthood, 25% of people either themselves have been to a clinic to get basic health care. so when you cut planned parenthood, it's not about contraception, it's about the fact that a huge number of low income women get their health care from planned parenthood. that's an economic issue. so i think that on our side when we talk about this stuff, we think about it in a very comprehensive way. and it's not, again, just a kind of single issue, women only care about this. nobody thinks that. >> another question? you over here. >> [inaudible] >> i can hear you. [laughter] >> good morning, i want to return to the conversation about unmarried women because i think, and this is an area which is of great importance to us. in fact, our president and ceo

was central to the establishment of the marriage gap and the importance of unmarried women many years ago as i think everybody on the stage is aware. but i want to focus on this more deeply because i think that it, it diminishes the rising significance of the marriage gap and of the importance of unmarried women overall. not just single, yes, certainly 10 or 15 year ago all of us were single, college, whatever, in this room i'm sure that's true. but the point now is it becomes much more of a 1257b for where, in fact, you are. single by choice, divorced or widowed which is the larger issue politically. really puts you in a position of economic vulnerable, you've had to move a lot, make choice having to do with your family, etc., which does have a direct impact on your political views. then i'll close it. the recent quinnipiac poll underscored the increasing significance of women -- >> okay.

is there a question here? >> yes. i want to are folks get back to the significance of the unmarried woman politically and the sort of growing significance of the divide within of the marriage gap for politics. >> okay. anna, you want to take first crack? >> well, i think the character of the so-called women's vote over time is going to change fundamentally because of the trend around decreasing marriage rates. right now, you know, i think women are split, maybe a slight patient are unmarried, but the trend is going that way. it's going to be higher and higher just like it is in europe and other places. and i think in the end as the generations grow up without, you know, marriage, it is going to fundamentally kind of change the character of the women's vote. it's probably going to be more progressive. there are all kinds of, you know, public policy implications, though, of the rise of sort of the unhate married. and particularly for single parents. and the fact that, you know,

this is a group of women who tend to be less educated, tend to be low wage work, tend to not have benefits, you know, there's all kinds of implications for them and their kids. and our public policy is largely built on people who are married. so we don't really have a kind of system that's set unto be responsive to the fact that most people are not going to be married. so at some point we're going to have to see significant policy changes. the earlier panel was talking about family leave and sick leave. those kinds of things are particularly important to single parents, and i think we are a little behind the curve. i think that's going to have to change. >> so what should the conservative political and policy response be to this demographic evolution? >> i do want to just give a shout out to the women who are not, um, as described, but also unmarried by choice not through circumstance. you have a whole raft of women who are highly educated and have very successful careers and are

not just the economically vulnerable ones anna has talked about that are also in that group of unmarrieds by choice and not through circumstance. and that's, i think to me, that's very important as well because you're looking at both ends of the economic spectrum. they're choosing not to be married. what do those women do, jill? they end up going and, um, looking at retirement security much younger, by about the age of 40 if you're unmarried at 40, that sort of, you know, you don't run out and get botox, i guess -- that's several years ago for me -- you start thinking about retirement a little bit younger. it's a little older if you're in a married household thattistically speaking. you go and buy your own home. the sort of older and highly educated who are also very democratic high-income, single, unmarried women. and i think the implication is to not all the think unmarried equals abortion/contraception.

unmarried equals -- it means a whole bunch of things. it's got to be all of the above. and, look, unmarried women have been increasing as a percentage of the o electorate. i remember looking when i first worked in polling in 1988 and was looking at the gender gap then, 1984 was only four years before that. and although reagan/bush won, beat mondale/ferraro among women by 55-45, female vice presidential nominee for the democrats, the difference in unmarried versus married was huge. and the other thing that's gone on here we haven't really discussed is you can have an unmarried household where children are present, you can have a married household where no children are present, and those two dynamics are also increasing. years ago if it was of a married household, there were kids in it. it's all a mishmash now. so we have to not even look at people in a-in car fashion, but

no marriage/children, no children/marriage, and i think that's another way to respect the choices women are making. >> i think we have time for one more question with a lightning round answer. >> hi, i'm with the information network, and given the name of this conference, i was wondering what you two thought our issues would be in 2020 as women. >> in 25 words or less. [laughter] kidding. >> i don't know that in eight years they're going to be all that different, but i do think the question of vulnerability of children is just going to be critical for women voters as they become more and more vulnerable on every indicator and we have more and more children growing up in single-headed households. >> i don't disagree. i would say we're going to get away from single issues and more into themes like security, and i think a big one will continue to be affordability. rather than just tax policy or

cost of services or government benefits or no government benefits, it's going to be that people think life is increasingly unaffordable. and this whole idea of creating jobs is limited because there are households all across this country where women have a job, could have two and three jobs, and it's not enough. it's not just about jobs, it's the affordability of everyday life. i also think energy is going to continue to bubble up, and i hope national security and terrorism is not a big issue in 2020 because that'll mean things are quiet and peaceful. >> we actually have time for one more question because our panelists were so brief. [laughter] >> there's one there. >> yeah, i see one over there. oh, we've got one. >> hi. my name is annie, i'm working at the impact center, and i was curious if you could talk just very briefly about the way that unmarried women who are in long-term relationships get counted in polling and whether or not that's actually something you even pay anticipation to as

polling agencies. >> we do. we ask people to tell us their own status, their relationship status, and we would record it as that single but in a committed relationship, i think is one of the questions. and then, of course, in a state that has same-sex marriage, if somebody says they're married, they're married. so we record that. >> yeah. i mean, you can disaggregate it or not, but politically somebody who is, um, not married but in a long-term relationship will tend to be, behave politically a lot like other unmarried women. because the choice not to get married, it says something about your overall perspective on life, and that includes your political perspective. >> [inaudible] [laughter] >> and on that note, i want to thank you both for coming and giving us some good information and some laughs. thanks a lot. police departments. [applause]

>> our next panel discussion, joining us on stage are doron petersan and heather podesta. moderating this discussion is linda douglass, senior vice president for global communications at atlantic media. [inaudible conversations] >> well, good morning, everyone, to this great big crowd. thank you so much for joining us. this is going to be a very interesting group because these are all, as you just heard, women who own and run their own businesses. so, and very different kinds of businesses. i'm just going to give you a very, very brief introduction. so doron petersan owns sticky fingers, very, very successful

business here in d.c. and heather podesta runs the largest woman-owned lobbying firm in the country. she's got 11 people working for her. and linda rabbit who is the chief -- the chairman and the chief executive officer of rand construction is also, obviously, the head of a construction company which we certain he want to -- certainly want to talk about with a woman owner. $250 million business with 200 employees. so let's get right into it. i want to ask each of you a question specific to your business. and, heather, i think i'll start with you, and i know that you are trying to think this one through because we just talked about it. but how does -- lobbying was a traditional male profession for the longest time here in washington, still is dominated, obviously, by men. how do you think that you handle your job advocating for your clients differently as a woman?

>> the most important thing as a lobbyist to do is listen and listen carefully and really hear what somebody is saying whether it's a client or a politician. and i think women are better listeners, and being able to understand what motivates people, what they need and connecting them with business interests or political interests and bringing all of that together, i think women are better at. also i've noted women tend to be better prepared. i don't go into something and just wig it. [laughter] wing it. and the other piece is in politics, in order to move something forward you need to figure out win/win/wins for

everyone, and it isn't simply a matter of blasting think and being the right person to get your way. and so pirging out -- figuring out all the different motivations and giving someone a little bit of victory so that everybody's happy at the end of the day, i think, is one of the trademarks that women lobbyists bring to the business. >> so, linda, obviously, you are in a very male-of dominated profession -- male-dominated proversion, and this was not your backgroundment you were not in the construction business to start. >> correct. >> so why did you do this? why -- and how did you do this? how did you choose such a channeling business for a woman -- challenging business for a woman given that your background was in marketing, is that correct? >> actually, i was trained as an english and american histories teacher, and my master's is in adolescent development. [laughter]

turns out works very well at job sites. [laughter] [applause] so, um, i did teach english and american history, and i married a very wealthy doctor and had two near-perfect children -- [laughter] and found out that he was an undiagnosed manic depressive, and i was in a very bad place, a very bad spot. went to work at kpmg as a secretary with my two degrees, and then the director of marketing. and in 1985 a woman i knew came to me and said i'm going to start the first woman-owned construction company, and i'm looking for a partner on the theory that the less you know about an opportunity, the more attractive it is. [laughter] i said, yes. and it was just need-based. my husband had taken himself, his money and his 21-year-old nurse offshore, and so mine was a totally need-based. but i grew to love the business.

because it's, actually, a service business. and i had been at kpmg, and i understood the service business. so i grew to love what i now do. >> so, doron, you started a very unusual business. you have a very successful vegan bakery. you, obviously, had to go out and get financing, you had to get somebody to help you get the business off the ground. was it harder to get financing for your nascent business because you're a woman, or were there challenges, do you think, that came to you getting financing because you're a woman? [laughter] >> what a fun topic. yes, and i'm still dealing with this today. about ten years ago when we incorporated our business, i started with a loan, and, um, no knowledge of the business side of what i was doing. i just knew that there was a need for what i was already creating and making in my home, there was a demand for it, and i

knew that i could -- i knew i could do it. i don't know how i knew, i just knew, right? just some magic. and i thought, well, i need some money. and my friend said, well, i have some money, i have $20,000. i said, great, that's enough. [laughter] so we started with $20,000, and we grew it very organically. so for the first six years, everything we made went right back into the business, purchasing for everything we needed, i had a business partner at the time, um, and we slowly started obtaining some financing through some local organizations like latino economic development corporation does some small loans for women-owned businesses where you do not have to have your husband sign which is, who would have thought? i was only married for a couple years and, oh, you don't have of to have your husband's credit run. oh, that's great, i guess. [laughter] so, okay. so then when we expanded the business, it's kind of two

follow. we sold a franchise, searchly sold a licensing agreement to a group in seoul, south korea, which gave us enough money to afford to get financing to open our next location which was about half a million dollars to build it. so six years later jump forward, i try to get a $10,000 loan for a piece of equipment, and they're like, oh, well, we need your husband, social security number, credit -- and i have ten years behind me which doesn't make any sense. so it's always challenging as a woman to obtain financing. even with private funding, it can still get a little bit tricky. i'm the sole owner of the business at this point, and it makes it difficult to get financing. >> so you don't all have to answer each question, but i do want to throw this out to the group and see who'd like to take one. so you all started a business in an area where, you know, it's a challenging area. do you think that women handle

risk in a different way? i mean, some studies show that women tend to be more cautious about risk taking, more cautious about money. the other theory is that they're just more prudent. but do you feel like you handled the risk? any of you, i mean, just go ahead and jump in, in a different way was -- because you're a woman? >> i don't know. [laughter] >> because you, obviously, just dove right in. >> this is a difficult challenge to answer. i think, um, one of the reasons why it's been successful or i took the risk is i'm okay with failure. i have had major failures in my life, and guess what? it's not that bad. you do pick yourself up, and you move on, and you realize, you know what? i can do this.

and maybe it comes from having been married three times. [laughter] [applause] but that you understand, all right, start again, do what you do, do it really well, and you'll be fine. >> i always say don't let other people define you. like, be who you are. if you're not a risk taker, own up to it and don't do it. and if -- i never saw this risk, i never started my business after i had the first partner, she and i separated in 1989, so i then started my own business. and i never saw it as risk. failure just wasn't an option. i had two children. we wanted to eat a lot every day. [laughter] so there was, there was no -- my back was against the wall, and i was going to do whatever i needed to do to support my family.

and i didn't want -- i didn't even think about risk. >> so in terms of how you run your businesses because you're all bosses, you all have people who work for you, you always hear women say that women in a workplace tend to be more collaborative, they tend to work better as teams. is that actually true? i mean, you run a big company, linda. let me ask you that to start with. >> i do think that women tend to be more collaborative. the issue with women in positions of power is a different issue, and that is that we are allowed by society's rules a narrower band of emotions. when a guy tells another guy that he's a jerk in worse language than i'm using, they go out and have a beer afterwards, slap each other on the back, and all is well. when a girl does that to a guy, there's a very different societal expectation of all of that. so my challenge is in this very male-dominated world that my

male counterparts can move in this range, and i can only move in this range. i can't be too soft because then i'm a powder puff, and i can't be too tough because then i'm a witch with a b in front of it. [laughter] >> anybody else want to weigh many on that? >> in my office we have no titles, so there is no hierarchy, and were all whether you're the intern there for a month or you've been with the firm for five years, we're all on, and we're all committed to meeting the needs of the client. and different people have different skills, and i really try to pull them in, um, so that everybody is engaged and understands that the client's bleeding, all of us are

bleeding. and it's our job to make it stop. it's funny, when you take away titles, you have a lot less office drama. why is so and so a vice president? i want to be a vice president. [laughter] and so i've tried to remove things that, you know, don't need to be issues from the workplace environment. really when you're in a service-based crisis environment, it's all about, um, results and responding immediately in a meaningful way. >> i do think women-owned businesses are flatter organizations. there have been a lot of studies about how men interact with each other, you know, one-up, one-down. they're very hierarchical. and women do run organizations that are less hire around hierarchical-driven.

>> why did you choose to do this risky thing and start your own business rather than joining an organization and working your way up the ladder which is what most people do in the working world? >> well, i'm -- i've always worked in restaurants, i love food. i went to school for nutrition and dietetics which dietetics is, you know, by nature it's very feminine-based. there weren't that many guys in my class, put it that way. [laughter] and i've always worked in restaurants, and it's very difficult to work your way up in a restaurant as a woman. i've never worked in another kitchen behind the scenes, i've always been put out in the front and never had the option to go back into the kitchen. that's while working for men and women. for me, there wasn't another business out there that i wanted to work for, um, and i saw a need for it in d.c., and i really wanted to help kind of build the foodie dullture, but also -- culture, but also bring

a responsible business into the forefront, into the limelight not only as fun and exciting, but also as financially stable and being able to support all the people and the players. but as far as the collaboration issue, um, and the flat middle management, we try and do away with that. but i think about that as looking outside of the business not only with the people that i work with in my business, but, um, i feel probably as a woman i'm not -- i'm less afraid to say, hey, i have no idea how to do this, i've never done it before. so you're the cfo of reuters, can you help me? and i'm not afraid to do that in any step or, hey, you work, you own the company that fixes mixers, can you show me how to replace the battery or this or that wire so i don't have to call you out again and spend $800? [laughter] and i think that being a woman allows you that honesty that

maybe men don't have. >> request i was going to ask that, actually, of all of you. we all have had the experience, those of us who have men in our lives of the man who refuses to ask for directions. [laughter] so you're talking about your willingness to ask how to do things. do you think, and let me ask you this, heather, because you're, again, in the washington, you know, hotbed of the lobbying world. do you think women are more comfortable asking for advice, the kind of advice that helps you move ahead in your business? or is it a sign of weakness if you have to ask a man for, for advice about how to do a business you're the u.s. starting? >> i think i've probably talked to half the women in this room before i started my business. and the advice and talent and knowledge that those this --

those in your networks is something that women do tap. i absolutely tap, and i continue to reach out today to understand what's going on, what can i be doing better, but also, um, having a technical financial issue or personnel issue. >> i need your help for the most powerful words in the english language. if you ask somebody for money, they'll give you advice. if you ask them for advice, they'll give you money. [laughter] >> okay, that's good. that's a very -- might want to write that down. [laughter] so, you know, we've all -- maybe it's already been discussed this morning, we've all seen the numbers that show that, um, women have the most, women have advanced degrees on every level at a greater percentage than men do, and yet they don't hold the number of -- they're not in the

boardrooms, and they're not the ceos in the united states. i have a question about the kind of training you need to go into business. do you think that formal training -- because i'm sure women in this audience who are thinking about perhaps starting a business, the formal training of an mba, for example, do you think that that's important? i mean, should women who want to start a business continue to try to, you know, educate themselves as much as they can which clearly seems to be the trend today? >> well, there's certainly nothing wrong with being credentialed. and as a woman, it is important to be credentialed. but the things one needs to own a business beyond that are not things you learn in business schools. and i talk to deans of business school all the time and say you're not teaching negotiating skills, you're not teaching psychology, you don't teach people how to read the room, you don't teach them strategy.

and those are the things you actually need to run a business. i mean, t nice to be a cpa, and and it's nice to know how to read a balance sheet, and you do need to do that. but those are really tactical. the leadership skills are things that we aren't teaching people. >> yeah. because, i mean, how did you -- i mean, doron, you, again, have a business that's grown into, you know, a fair amount of money here. how did you, how did you know how to do that? >> i didn't. >> okay. [laughter] honest answer. >> the cfo from reuters that i was telling you about? he sat next to me for about two years and explained it to me, and i've had a lot of people in my life that have held my hand because i've put it out there. i don't know how to do this, oh, i'll show you, and you just make the next ten years of birthday cakes for my kids, and we'll be fine. i've seriously traded dozens of sticking buns for help -- [laughter] trade is alive and well. it works really well for me. but i really don't have a

business background. i don't have, or i didn't think i really had a good knowledge base of business, but it's what i've learned as i've gone along through my business. it's one thing that has really been the active education for me, and you can go in with a passion for what you believe in, but without knowing at least some business basics, it's going to be extremely difficult. so i don't know if you need to go and get the mba. it doesn't hurt, but if you only have so much money and you want to invest it in your passion or in school, i mean, that's a ard decision. that's a hard decision. >> i want to -- go ahead, heather. >> one thing i found that women are comfortable doing is hiring people that are super smart and better than they are. [laughter] that i'm not threatened by having really talented people working with me. it makes me so much better. >> okay. well, i think we have, actually,

run up against the wall of our discussion. but do we -- we're going to be opening to questions now? is that what the message is that i'm getting over there subtly? [laughter] so i know you have questions for this group. and while you're asking your questions, i'm going to ask my last question, and maybe you can work it into your answer to their questions because i'd love to hear your advice for young women. a lot of that's come through. keep the younger women in the audience in mind who want to follow in your footsteps as you answer their questions, and if you could identify yourselves -- >> i'll take the first one or not. hi. >> okay. there you go. >> my name's elizabeth sway, i'm with a woman-owned small business, state scape, we do state and regular rah story tracking, and i am so fortunate to have worked so close with the president of my company.

so i wanted to ask all of you ladies, what do you do in particular in terms of flexible schedules or creative problem solving or extended maternity leave, all those kinds of things to build a strong support for the next generation of women who are working for you? >> yes, yes, yes, yes. [laughter] and, boy, it's really, really hard. and in my firm when a client needs something, they need it. and knowing that i've built in redundancies so i never have just me or just two people working on a client. there is always backup because life happens. um, but a client emergency -- life happens is not responsive and doesn't, um, keep clients

around for a long time. because no matter what business you're in, you are constantly judges on your last 15 minutes. and your commitment to quality has to be consistent and omnipresent, and then once you start from there, you build the infrastructure that supports that goal. >> the reality is whenever there is an issue, whether it be a death in the family or a birth or an adoption or an illness, everybody, everybody in the business has to work harder to support that one person. and it's always the we would do it for you if you were going through this. and it's really the support and having the backup to be able to keep the business going and to be able to support the people that are running your business, essentially. >> yes. i see some hands back there.

>> hi. good morning. my name's -- [inaudible] i just graduated -- [inaudible] and my question's in regard to fostering -- thank you. with regard to fostering innovation outside of the school environment. in college i co-founded a magazine which is an educational magazine for teenage girls in sierra leone, and it's aiming to promote female empowerment. so i was wondering what advice you have for other college students who go beyond the safe college incue bus to the real world? be. >> you've all done it. and this is a philosophical question, too, because i think it's really about the mindset that you bring to making the decisions, the kinds of decisions that she's talking about. >> well, i'm going to answer that in a different way only because i want to make this point, and i'm going to use this opportunity to make the point i want to make. [laughter]

actually, i'm 63, so in my generation more men have helped me than women have helped me. and my mantra to every young woman i meet is help another woman. it works so exponentially. we are not very nice to each other sometimes. we think we have to go shopping for shoes with each other to, you know, do business. we don't. we have to be supportive in lots of different ways. so when you have a piece of advice you could help another woman with, give them that piece of advice. wherever you are, wherever you go in your life just be a giving person, and it'll come back to you a hundredfold. [applause] >> that's very good advice. there's somebody back there. >> hi. hi, haley egan from the new

america foundation. thank you so much for your comments, they're really enlightening. i did have a question, though, we've been talking a lot about women as a whole, and heather, in particular you mentioned women are better listeners, women are better -- they're better prepared. and i think a really dangerous, um, counterargument that a lot of people might make -- i wouldn't make -- but is that, well, that's okay because men are better at science, and men are better at math -- >> he got tired, by the way. [laughter] the university president who said that got fired. [laughter] >> and i'm wondering, i think it's a problem to talk about women as a whole and what women as a whole are good at. i was wondering your thoughts on that. >> each of of us has come to these seats taking very different paths. we all have our own styles, our

own knowledge, our own approach. and it's very hard and unfair to generalize, you know, what's a woman's approach, what are men good at. and even amongst the four of us here who have been pioneers, linda especially, you know, there are no set way. and i think for me one of the tipgs you learn in politics -- one of the things you learn in politics is not to ask permission. you can apologize afterwards. [laughter] but you want to go -- if you know in your gut what the right thing is to do, do it. do it boldly, do it smartly and go for it. >> very good advice. yeah. somebody back there? >> on that note my name's roger, i'm an artist in d.c., and i'm looking to open a gallery, and

i'm looking for some funding -- [laughter] so speaking about being bold and going for it finish. >> yeah? >> maybe the three of the women, the ladies on the panel, could you help me out? [laughter] >> next. >> so much for that. >> but, i mean, all the started because we knew we had clients. we knew the business would be there. and we did the preparation that was necessary so that when we opened the doors, there was money coming in. >> right. i walked around kpmg, and the managing partner said just find something that needs rep vegas. i want to be -- renovation. i want to be your first client. so heather makes a very good point. don't get out ahead of your supply line. >> when i say i have a passion for my business, i like baking, i think it's fun. i think it's a lot of hard work, and people often think lik