Zoë Baird Budinger is President of the Markle Foundation, which focuses on using information and communications technologies to address critical public needs, particularly in health care and the nation’s security. Currently, Markle is developing an initiative to broaden the benefits of advances in information technology to create a vibrant economic future for all Americans. Zoë’s career spans business, government, and academia. She has been Senior Vice President and General Counsel of Aetna, Inc., a Senior Visiting Scholar at Yale Law School, Counselor and Staff Executive at General Electric, and a Partner in the law firm of O’Melveny & Myers. She was Associate General Counsel to President Jimmy Carter and an attorney in the Office of Legal Counsel of the Department of Justice. She served on President Clinton’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (1993–2001), the Secretary of Defense’s Privacy Advisory Committee (2003–2004), and the Attorney General’s International Competition Policy Advisory Committee (1997–2000). Zoë co-chaired the Markle Task Force on National Security in the Information Age and participated in the Steering Group of Markle Connecting for Health. She serves on a number of nonprofit and corporate boards including the Brookings Institution, the Chubb Corporation, and Boston Properties.
America’s Economic Opportunity in a World of Services
Technology and networks are lowering barriers to markets worldwide, and the U.S. has a growing jobs problem. As global growth shifts towards developing countries and cities, how can we most benefit? We could be on the threshold of a new era of data-driven progress, but we need a new focus on exports, especially for services, which accounts for the lion’s share of the American economy. What skills does the U.S. need to develop? Can small and medium-sized companies take advantage of expanding access and transparency in the global marketplace? What incentives and policies will enable these global opportunities? Michael D. Capellas of the Virtual Computing Environment Company, Bradford Jensen of the McDonough School of Business at Georgetown University, and Miriam Sapiro of the Office of the USTR gather at Techonomy 2012 to discuss. Zoë Baird of the Markle Foundation moderates the session.
Conferences
Techonomy 12
Techonomy focuses on how the exponential pace of technology progress makes possible a new world. A wave of accelerating change driven by technology’s advance is washing over our lives, bringing great potential for business and social progress.
