Business Forward Business Forward

Ed Meier talks with Natalie Gould, Co-Founder and COO of Washington Leadership Academy (WLA), about reforming high schools to prepare students for the future of work. They discuss WLA’s mandatory four-year computer science progression, its internship program, and what policymakers can do to encourage high schools to teach more technical skills.

Taxpayers spend billions of dollars each year subsidizing coal companies, even though coal jobs are disappearing due to automation, surface mining, and natural gas. Despite clear market forces, Trump continues to protect coal plants and promise he will bring mining jobs back. Featured guests include Ohio business leader Myles Murray, director of communications at Better Together Solar, and David Hayes, former deputy secretary of the interior and current executive director of the State Energy and Environmental Impact Center at NYU.

President Trump once claimed that trade wars are "good and easy to win," but in his clash with China - American companies are paying the price. In trade wars with no strategy, there are more losers than winners. Featured guests include business leader and serial entrepreneur Robert Roche, founder and president of Roche Enterprises, and Jen Harris, former State Department official in the Obama Administration.

Business Forward Foundation welcomes Congresswoman Haley Stevens (MI-11), New Democrat Coalition Future of Work Task Force Co-Chair, for a conference call briefing on closing the skills gap, investing in STEM education, and preparing young Americans for an economy in which they will need to operate as lifelong learners. 

Small businesses employ nearly half of America’s workers and generate most of our new jobs. However, fewer new small businesses are being established, especially in rural areas. What’s to blame? Student debt and the lack of fair access to capital. Featured guests include Illinois business leader Robin Simmons, director of innovation and outreach at Sunshine Enterprises, Illinois business leader Eya Louis of SOUL Works L3C, and Michael S. Barr, Dean of the Ford School of Public Policy at the University of Michigan.

Business Forward welcomed Cameron Kerry, visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution’s Center for Technology Innovation and former acting Secretary of Commerce, for a briefing on the state of consumer privacy reform. He discussed the surge in data collection, new data uses, key players in Congress, and what a bipartisan deal might look like.