On Thursday, July 1st, WITA hosted The Competition to Win the 21st Century — The U.S. and China as we examined legislation making its way through Congress to bolster American innovation and competitiveness in the face of China’s global economic ambitions.
WITA Webinar Featuring:
Representative Rick Larsen (D-WA), Co-Chair of the Bipartisan U.S.-China Working Group
Bonnie Glaser, Director, Asia Program, German Marshall Fund
Matthew P. Goodman, Senior Vice President for Economics and Simon Chair in Political Economy, Center for Strategic & International Studies
Naomi Wilson, Vice President of Policy, Asia, Information Technology Industry Council
SPEAKER BIOGRAPHIES
Rick Larsen represents Washington State’s Second Congressional District, which includes portions of Snohomish, Skagit and Whatcom counties and all of Island and San Juan counties.
Rick serves on the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee and the House Armed Services Committee. These committees enable Rick to focus on creating jobs and opportunity to meet the local needs of Northwest Washington.
As a member of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, Rick is committed to investing in transportation to drive job growth and keep the economy moving. Rick will continue to fight for strong investments in roads, bridges, highways and transit to build a foundation for future economic growth. Rail safety is another priority issue for Rick, and he has worked hard to push for better safety standards for crude oil traveling by rail.
Rick is the Chair, the most senior Democratic member, of the Aviation Subcommittee. The work of the Subcommittee is critical to jobs and the economy in Washington state and the Second District. He says, “the Pacific Northwest is the aerospace capital of the world, and I will work hard to make sure the United States invests in our aviation future. Aviation means jobs in Northwest Washington. Anything I can do to support the growth and safety of air travel will bring good jobs to our communities.”
The Second District is home to Naval Station Everett and Naval Air Station Whidbey Island, which are vital to the region’s economy and national security. As a member of the House Armed Services Committee, Rick works hard to support these military bases. He is pushing to make sure our men and women in uniform get the pay and benefits they have earned and the equipment they need to keep our country safe. Rick is also focused on ensuring that veterans have access to the resources and health care they need to help them be successful in civilian life. Rick worked hard with local veterans to open a Community Based Outpatient Clinic in Mount Vernon to make health care and services more accessible for veterans in the Second District.
Northwest Washington is one of the most beautiful areas of the country, and Rick is committed to protecting our natural resources for recreation and tourism, a major economic driver. He has led efforts to preserve public lands, restore critical salmon habitat, and combat climate change through investments in clean energy.
Rick is the co-chair of the bipartisan U.S.-China Working Group, which educates Members of Congress about U.S.-China issues through meetings and briefings with academic, business and political leaders from the U.S. and China. China is the largest and most rapidly growing export market for Washington state. Forty percent of all jobs in Washington state are tied to trade, and from 2000 to 2009, Washington state exports to China grew by 379 percent. Rick has visited China nine times.
Rick also co-founded the Congressional Arctic Working Group, a bipartisan group to help bring more focus to U.S. policy issues related to the Arctic. Rick is a leader on this issue because he recognizes that other countries are rapidly building their capacity to traverse icy Arctic waters with commercial, research and tourism vessels. As the U.S. prepares to take the chairmanship of the Arctic Council in 2015, Rick is committed to making sure our country lives up to its environmental, economic and strategic commitments as an Arctic nation.
The Larsen family has been building a legacy in the Second Congressional District for more than a century. Rick and his wife, Tiia, are the proud parents of two sons, Robert and Per (pronounced “Pair”), who represent the fifth generation of Larsens in the district.
Bonnie Glaser is the Director of the Asia Program at the German Marshall Fund of the United States. She was previously senior adviser for Asia and the Director of the China Power Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Ms. Glaser is concomitantly a nonresident fellow with the Lowy Institute in Sydney, Australia, and a senior associate with the Pacific Forum.
For more than three decades, Ms. Glaser has worked at the intersection of Asia-Pacific geopolitics and U.S. policy. From 2008 to mid-2015, she was a senior adviser with the CSIS Freeman Chair in China Studies, and from 2003 to 2008, she was a senior associate in the CSIS International Security Program.
Prior to joining CSIS, she served as a consultant for various U.S. government offices, including the Departments of Defense and State. Ms. Glaser has published widely in academic and policy journals, including the Washington Quarterly, China Quarterly, Asian Survey, International Security, Contemporary Southeast Asia, American Foreign Policy Interests, Far Eastern Economic Review, and Korean Journal of Defense Analysis, as well as in leading newspapers such as the New York Times and International Herald Tribune and in various edited volumes on Asian security. She is also a regular contributor to the Pacific Forum web journal Comparative Connections. She is currently a board member of the U.S. Committee of the Council for Security Cooperation in the Asia Pacific and a member of both the Council on Foreign Relations and the International Institute for Strategic Studies. She served as a member of the Defense Department’s Defense Policy Board China Panel in 1997.
Ms. Glaser received her B.A. in political science from Boston University and her M.A. with concentrations in international economics and Chinese studies from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.
Matthew P. Goodman is Senior Vice President for Economics and holds the Simon Chair in Political Economy at CSIS. The CSIS Economics Program, which he directs, focuses on international economic policy and global economic governance.
Before joining CSIS in 2012, Goodman served as director for international economics on the National Security Council staff, helping the president prepare for global and regional summits, including the G20, Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), and East Asia Summit. Prior to the White House, Goodman was senior adviser to the undersecretary for economic affairs at the U.S. Department of State.
Before joining the Obama administration in 2009, he worked for five years at Albright Stonebridge Group, where he was managing director for Asia. From 2002 to 2004, he served at the White House as director for Asian economic affairs on the National Security Council staff. Prior to that, he spent five years at Goldman, Sachs & Co., heading the bank’s government affairs operations in Tokyo and London. From 1988 to 1997, he worked as an international economist at the U.S. Treasury Department, including five years as financial attaché at the U.S. embassy in Tokyo.
Goodman holds an M.A. in international relations from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) and a B.Sc. in economics from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). He is a life member of the Council on Foreign Relations and chairman emeritus of the board of trustees of the Japan-America Society of Washington, D.C.
Naomi Wilson serves as Vice President of Policy, Asia at the Information Technology Industry Council (ITI).
Prior to joining ITI, Naomi served at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS), where she most recently held the position of acting director for Asia-Pacific. In that capacity, she played a leading role on cybersecurity, law enforcement, and customs cooperation issues related to Asia and served as a senior advisor to Secretary Jeh Johnson. During her tenure at DHS, Naomi led development and implementation of priority policy initiatives for DHS engagement with China, including secretarial engagements and agreements. She worked closely with interagency colleagues to negotiate and implement agreements stemming from the September 2015 State visit between Presidents Barack Obama and Xi Jinping, including managing the U.S.-China High-Level Dialogue on Cybercrime and Related Issues for DHS.
Prior to joining DHS, Naomi served as a staffer on the Senate Committee on Homeland Security & Governmental Affairs and as a research assistant at the Center for Strategic & International Studies (CSIS).
Naomi holds a Bachelor’s degree in English and Master’s in International Affairs & National Security. In 2011, she completed intensive Chinese language training at Peking University. Naomi speaks advanced Mandarin and French and is a native of Connecticut.