he is involved with the united negro college fund. he is vice chairman of ford's theatre raising $50 million. i can assure you that he was very persuasive to have people give more money than they thought there were going to. i urge you all to go to ford's theatre because a lot of it is the result of his persuasive skills. he now spends a good deal of time talking to people on capitol hill and others in the administration and has a lot of thoughts about what is going on in the policy debate today. let me introduce the ceo of exxonmobil, rex tillerson. [applause] >> thank you, david. it is my privilege to be here tonight to speak with all of you. i did a little bit of looking back on the history of the economic club of washington, which understand has been around for about 25 years. in checking around on the history of your club and what its purpose is, i think it is apparent that it does play a valuable role in providing yet another different and unique forum to talk about the various issues in front of the nation today. i think it's f