It is my honor to welcome virtually
to the conference a change maker in her own right,
Gina Raimondo, the Secretary of Commerce
for the United States. Secretary,
it's great to have you.
We were told you couldn't join us in person because
you had more important matters,
like a meeting with the president.
No, not more important and definitely not more enjoyable.
But I just think that I had to stay here.
Not more enjoyable. Got got an applause.
We have a great crowd here.
And I'm so excited to talk to you because
Secretary Raimondo has been on CNBC multiple times in the
last few weeks as she doled out billion dollars and
billions of dollars of grants for the CHIPS Act.
But what's so special about this conversation and having her
today here at Changemakers
is we get to talk about her and her remarkable
journey and her career path and her leadership.
So, Madam Secretary, thank you.
I think a lot of people don't might not know
your background,
that you're actually a lawyer
and a former venture capitalist.
How many venture capitalists are there in the Biden administration?
Oh, good question. I'm sure it's the only one in
the cabinet.
I'm the only like high-ranking member
it, you know, by the way,
I tell to young women all the time,
it's OK to change and it's OK if you're,
you know, 25 or 30 and you're not sure what
you want to do.
I started as a lawyer and then I became an
entrepreneur.
Actually, I was part of start starting a company and
then I went into the venture capital business focused on
healthcare.
I was so interested in your prior panel.
And then I get into public service.
So I, I tell young people all the time,
don't be stressed. You're, you're in a
career's a long time and you can do several different
things.
So how did you get into government 'cause you went
to become,
you went on to become the governor of Rhode Island.
How did you get into government and how did you
meet President Biden and wind up in his cabinet?
So like so many women who get into government,
it wasn't really my plan.
In fact, at the time you decided to run for
office,
I had a three-year old and a five year old,
parents in their mid 80s,
and I was doing great.
I was a general partner at a venture firm running
the healthcare practice.
Things are going well, but I just,
I felt the people of Rhode Island deserve better leadership.
And I was looking around and feeling frustrated by
what I saw were people not getting,
you know, good schools, good healthcare,
good public services. And I said I'm going to give
it a try.
I called my parents and they both my mother cried.
She said like politics, it's such a dirty business.
My father said, you have such a good job.
What about the little kids?
But I'm really happy I did public service because
you can make an impact if you step up.
Yeah. I mean, what? What about the little kids and
the parents and the family and all of that?
You and I first met
in Davos. We we bonded over the fact that both
of our kids,
like, had performances or sports games back at home and
we had this crazy travel schedule.
How do you do it?
It's not easy and every day is a different adventure.
I do it the way every single person in the
your audience and you yourself do it.
I mean, it's a daily
challenge. I'll tell you this though,
my kids, I know in my personal case,
my children are better for the fact that I have
parented them the way I have
now that my daughter is 19,
more than ever she says to me
like, wow mom, you know,
you're a big deal. I wanna,
I wanna do stuff like that.
It's great, great that you can do that.
You know
this proud. He may not admit it,
he's a 17 year old boy,
but
you know, you just do it.
You do what you gotta do and that's what makes
women special.
Don't shy away from the fact that you have to
do the juggle and the double task and,
you know, multitasking. That's our superpower.
Embrace it. It is harder if if in any given
day you think I just can't do it,
join the club. You get through the day one step
at a time.
Tomorrow's a new day. I've been embracing quality over quantity
with the children.
So how did we get to President Biden?
How did you get to
the Commerce Department?
I was a long term admirer of the
president's. When I was the governor of Rhode Island,
I pushed for a controversial infrastructure project that involved
putting tolls on trucks and the president,
then vice president came to Rhode Island to help me
pass that.
We stayed in contact and then when he became president,
he called and asked if I would take this job.
Interestingly, I have a long term commitment to manufacturing.
I did a lot of that in Rhode Island.
I grew up in a manufacturing family.
The president called and said
I want to work with you to rebuild American manufacturing.
And that of course, spoke to my heart and what
I had done and I,
you know, left at the opportunity.
So it's interesting because you're you have a lot going
on right now between the CHIPS Act and the Infrastructure
Act.
It feels like the Commerce Department is more prominent in
terms of strategic priorities for an administration than we've seen
before.
Is that true and how do you deal with that?
Yes, it is absolutely true.
We have the CHIPS Act Put it in perspective.
Typically the Commerce Department's budget for years was $10 billion
a year. I under my,
now the budget's about 150 billion.
So we've gone, it's like 15 times bigger than it's
ever been.
I've just launched under the president's leadership,
the Artificial Intelligence Safety Institute,
building a whole team to do that.
We're doing the CHIPS Act,
as you said, we're deep in the weeds of AIAI
policy,
export controls, you know, at the front end of our
relationship with China,
our tech relationship and our economic relationship.
So it's a really exciting time to be here.
I love it. And what I've done is I've just
recruited.
I, I spent a lot of my time recruiting top
talent,
motivating top talent. And I find if you do enough
of that,
you know, they can do the work
better than I can. And
so my job is like manage risk,
set a vision and get a great team.
But how do you how do you hire the top
people?
What do you look for
people interested in meeting the mission,
not interested in advancing their career?
When I interview people or talk to people,
if they say, you know,
I think this will be interesting and I'll learn a
lot,
that's not a good fit for me.
And that's a fine thing to be.
But I want people who say
I want to make the country a better place.
I want to make the country safer.
I want to connect every American with broadband,
you know, people in it for the mission,
which which is critical because we work seven days a
week and I can't really pay anyone,
you know, private sector salaries.
I look for people with a record of success,
track record, some bit of excellence or exceptionalism in their
background,
even if it's not directly aligned with
what we do,
and somebody who's really up for a challenge.
Government work is hard. There's obstacles every day that get
dropped on our plate
from places out of our control,
and we need folks who don't
drip into a puddle but say,
OK, here's a problem. What's the plan?
It's 50,000 people right at the Commerce Department right now.
Yes, yes, and growing. I've hired 200 people alone just
to do the chips work.
We've hired several hundred people to do our work around
broadband,
hiring hundreds of people to help us do the artificial
intelligence work.
So yes, it's about 50,000,
but we're growing it, especially around tech.
I was going to ask you how much of your
time right now is being spent on chips because it
feels like we're just getting into this exciting moment where
the money is announced. By the way,
if you could confirm the Micron
6.1 billion, that would be great.
Don't think we've had confirmation of that report
and, and just how that gets done and how much
time it takes.
It takes a ton of time,
but we're on A roll.
You know, a few weeks ago I was in Arizona
with the president.
We announced Intel, huge grant,
huge expansion. A week after that,
Taiwan Semiconductor huge announcement, 3 leading edge fabs.
Just this Monday, I was in Texas.
Samsung, The Samsung facility in Texas is going to be
twice as big as their flagship facility in Korea.
No one ever thought we could get that done.
And then as you just said,
Micron in upstate New York.
So it's incredible, you know,
those just those four announcements alone will be,
I don't know, 60-70 thousand new jobs in America.
And most important, we for the first time in a
long time are going to be making leading edge semiconductors
in the United States.
So I, yeah, I, I spend a lot of time
on it.
I don't know. You can't hear the reaction,
but you're, you got an applause for that with the,
with the job announcement,
the the child care provision,
what you put, this was a priority,
I know for you to put into this law.
How does that work? Why was it so important?
Because I remember when, when it came out,
there was a lot of criticism.
Why, Why are we adding social policy into
manufacturing, national security policy to build semiconductor factories?
Anyone who thinks childcare is social policy is deeply misguided
and has not run a business
because if you want the best talent,
you need women to work.
And if that's what you want,
they have to have access to affordable,
high quality childcare. It does not mean you,
the company obviously has to provide the childcare on site,
but it means, you know,
just like we provide for why do we provide healthcare?
You know, why do we provide
paid leave? Like, we make a plenty of investments,
continuing education, plenty of investments to attract and retain the
best talent and child care is
core to enabling women to work.
And so when I said these companies had to provide
us their workforce plan and their child care plan,
I was not prescribing a way for them to do
that.
What we were saying is
if you want taxpayer money,
you got to prove to us you'll be successful.
And that means like telling us what is your plan?
How are you going to find talent?
How are you going to retain talent?
I will tell you this
on Monday when I was in Texas,
I was with the CEO of Samsung chip division.
It was an amazing announcement and he pulled me aside
and he said,
secretary, right there is the building where we will have
on campus childcare and an on campus job training center.
And I, you know, I thanked him and,
and such and he said,
it's what we do in Korea
and we know it works.
And of course it's what we'll do here.
So yes, certain politicians on Capitol Hill didn't like my
stance,
but the folks running these companies who know they need
top talent have embraced it.
How do we how do we scale that?
How do we get that in a in a bigger
way across the country and across business?
I think the business community really has to raise their
voice
and just kind of echo what I'm saying,
which is it's not social policy,
it's economic policy. If you want a strong economy,
women have to participate. And in order for that to
happen,
there needs to be childcare.
Half of Americans, half of Americans live in what's termed
A childcare desert,
which means there's just no,
there's not enough child care providers at a cost that's
affordable.
And I look, I talk to CE OS frequently,
and I'm sure the folks in your audience either
feel this or have experienced it who say to me,
man, some of my best software engineers are women.
But it's such a struggle to get them to go
from being an engineer to a manager or a manager
to AVP
because they shy away from the big promotion because of
childcare.
So we can fix that.
Doesn't have to be that way.
Other countries have figured it out.
You know, Japan has much better childcare and not surprisingly,
much higher women participation in the workforce.
So
fewer babies, though.
What'd you say? Fewer babies,
fewer big. OK, fine. But look,
I'll tell you this. I'm sorry for the background noise.
Here's one thing I know.
Look around the world today.
Look around the world. Look at what is happening all
over the world,
in the Middle East, in Asia,
in Russia, in like, all around the world.
It's impossible, in my view,
not to conclude that we need more women in positions
of leadership.
It is good for the world,
it is good for our economy,
it is good for companies to have more women in
the top jobs.
And the only way to get there is to help
them get there.
And childcare is a key piece of that puzzle.
What else are you doing on that front?
Because I know it is such an important priority for
you now that you are a woman in power to
promote other women in government and in senior leadership positions.
I'm trying to raise my voice
to pound the drum that this is a commercial issue,
an economic issue and not just a woman's issue or
social issue.
I'll be hosting on June 27th a childcare summit
and which is a different thing that the commerce secretary
would host a childcare summit.
I'll be convening companies and also men.
You know, all often when I go to childcare events,
it's all women, which is great,
but it's not just our problem.
So I'm doing that. As I said,
we're doing the work around chips,
which I think is making a difference.
And even just around here,
you know, I do everything I can in my
day-to-day life helping and supporting women to take the next
step in their career.
What, what would be some advice,
Secretary Raimondo, that you would give yourself
when you were just starting out as a lawyer,
knowing what you know now about leadership?
Don't be so hard on yourself.
You know, dwell in the success.
Don't dwell in the negativity.
Learn, you know, make mistakes,
learn move on. Dwell in the positivity.
Don't be afraid of risk.
And like a step at a time,
1 foot after the other,
just stay on your feet and keep going.
Can you run for president?
Oh, my God, this is not a political forum.
I'm not allowed to talk politics.
I'm in my office.
Some woman needs to be president of this country and
it'll be a better country for it.
That is what I will say.
All right, last question, I'll ask it in another way.
Can your politics are pretty centrist?
Can you ever win the support of your party
with your politics?
Oh, well, I was re elected as governor with the
widest margin in over a generation.
So I think that there's plenty of room for moderates.
You know, I mean, actually,
I think if you study
who has been winning elections
around the country, it is often moderates.
And that's an interesting thing.
It's an interesting thing because the,
I don't know what the right word is,
social media ecosystem, cable TV is massively,
you know, separated. But frankly,
President Biden's in the Oval Office.
I mean, if you look at who was initially in
that primary in his election,
he's the moderate and he's the president.
So short answer is absolutely,
'cause I think it's where most Americans are.
Just think of how big of a deal your kids
will think you are
if you become president. Secretary Gina Raimondo,
thank you so much for the time today.