Inspired with Alexa von Tobel
00:27:22 · Penny Pritzker, Alexa von Tobel
[00:27:22] S1: Well, and and also encouraging innovation elsewhere. Think. Yes. It's it's... For sure, I think innovation and risk taking is part of the culture and part of the DNA of The United States. But I also think it's good to encourage that evolution, which has happened. One of the things that happened from you being a mentor and others is incubators and accelerators got created in places you wouldn't ever have imagined. And, you know, so it is, to me, something that has to be nurtured and promoted as much as it is something just to talk about. [00:28:03] S0: I remember... And again, it was... I was probably... Had dropped out of Harvard Business School. Maybe I was in my twenties. And I heard Bill Clinton speak at something, and he was talking about how one of the things he wished for the planet was that there were more people putting their hand up to take personal, emotional risk as entrepreneurs to solve more of the problems. And it had never dawned on me. I remember as a young person really leaving this talk that he gave and thinking to myself, I just assumed there were billions of people on the planet waking up every day wanting to do that. And when you really start to think about the problems, it's like forget Elon Musk's politics, You appreciate people that work twenty hours a day on behalf of society to try to do hard things. And I remember being really proud that I was so grateful I was born here. [00:29:03] S1: Yes. I think we're both very lucky to be born in this country.
00:29:03 · Penny Pritzker, Alexa von Tobel
[00:29:03] S1: Yes. I think we're both very lucky to be born in this country. [00:29:07] S0: Yeah. So quick flag. When you were in the White House, they called everything that you were doing the Innovation Agency, which is pretty cool. Let's be honest. That's pretty rad. Because you broke through in one hundred years, there wasn't enough data and infrastructure to think about business for this country. And you really went in and kinda took your gloves off as an entrepreneur that you are. And you were trying to innovate inside the walls of the White House. And my question is, do you like walk around with your cup of coffee and be like, I work in the White House? Like, I mean, that's pretty cool. [00:29:39] S1: I remember the first time But give me [00:29:41] S0: a story of, like, you
00:29:43 · Penny Pritzker
[00:29:43] S1: So as a secretary, you're dropped off at the White House in the West Wing. You're dropped off in the West Wing, and there's a door you walk in. And I just walked in all by myself, and I walked past the guard. And I walked up the stairs, and I watched Pax another guard. And then I was walking down the colonnade, which, you know, that famous colonnade you've seen press. And I was going over to the East Wing for a meeting that was occurring there. And no one's escorting me, and no one's telling me. And and I'm thinking to myself, oh my god. And I walked by the, you know, the fountain that's on the grounds of the White House, and I said, and I'm looking at the Washington Memorial. And I said to myself, oh my god, I work here. And then I felt this enormous weight in the sense of the responsibility to bring your best self and bring everything you've ever learned in your life to the job. And there were so many instances where I was studying hard and work. I felt like I was back in college and graduate school, you know, working so hard to, you know, be knowledgeable enough. And, you know, it's a real privilege to have those positions, but there's a real responsibility that goes with it. And one of the nice things that is possible is when you reach out to people like you and say, I need help. Would you brief me? Would you teach me? Would you help me? What are your perspectives? You could reach out to expertise all over our country. And we did a lot of that. I did that constantly for every country that I worked with and for each of the topics and really listened hard to what the challenges were. So innovation, I was talking with someone about innovation today and the relationship between innovation and listening to the customer. And to me as secretary of commerce, the customer was the American business community. Yep. And so what I did... The first thing I did was when I got there was also... We took the country. We divided it into eight different sections. And I went to each of those, you know, geographies, and I met with large business leaders and small business leaders and, you know, leaders in the community, etcetera, and tried to understand what are the most important things you think are getting in the way of your building your enterprise more and creating more jobs.
00:32:19 · Penny Pritzker, Alexa von Tobel
And they were tied together because at the time we had 10% unemployment and the goal was job creation. And it's funny when you ask people what they need for help, they're willing to tell you. And so then you try to figure out how can you be of assistance. So it's... The other thing about the job is the scope. The scope is large. And so I've never worked on things that were as Massive. Big. But the reality is it's still all about human relations. You wanna get something done, you really have to build trust and relationships with people both inside the government and outside the government, inside The United States, around the world. [00:33:03] S0: You once told me that what you learned about diplomacy is that as long as you're talking, things are working. And I will never forget that.
00:33:03 · Alexa von Tobel, Penny Pritzker
[00:33:03] S0: You once told me that what you learned about diplomacy is that as long as you're talking, things are working. And I will never forget that. [00:33:10] S1: I asked, what are these dialogues? I don't get all these dialogues because I'm used to like you. Let's have a meeting. Let's figure out the outcomes, and let's go, go, go. But countries, for them to work together, they have to work through really knotty issues often. And I'm not talking about war. I'm talking about just even in times of where everything is calm. There's issues. We worked, for example, the digital connection between The United States and Europe was at risk, and the agreements that we had had fallen apart. And so we had to renegotiate what was going to be the digital trade between The United States and Europe during my tenure. That was probably one of the most significant things it was worth about at that time, and it's only gotta be multiples of it now, at the time, two eighty, two ninety billion dollars. Wow. At that time, I'd never worked on something that large and that big. And... But we were very serious working with the European Union to create what's... Was called the privacy shield, which allowed for digital trade to continue and grow. There were all kinds of issues you mem... You know, privacy. Remember privacy used to be something we were there? [00:34:25] S0: I... You know?
00:34:25 · Alexa von Tobel, Penny Pritzker
[00:34:25] S0: I... You know? [00:34:26] S1: Well I also worked on cybersecurity. The beginning days of... We put together a blueprint that actually the Trump administration, the first term, used for cybersecurity. We also did all the groundwork for the CHIPS Act, basically. We were very early in in terms of understanding what was coming. You know, today we take Waymo or things like that, autonomy in vehicles or in drones and things for granted. But in order to... Actually, for those things to function, you need access to the airwaves. You need all kinds of infrastructure that has to be put in place. We worked on all of that. So it was fun and exciting, but it was also opened my aperture to the technologies that we're living with today.