Live Talks Los Angeles invites you to:
a morning Business Forum with:

Jennifer Granholm, former governor of Michigan
in conversation with business columnist James Flanigan
The Fight for Jobs and America’s Economic Future

Jennifer M. Granholm was elected governor of Michigan in 2002 and re-elected in 2006. She was born in Vancouver, Canada, grew up in California, and is an honors graduate of both the University of California at Berkeley and Harvard Law School.  She began her career in public service as a judicial clerk for Michigan’s Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals. She became a federal prosecutor in Detroit in 1990.  Granholm was elected Michigan’s first female attorney general in 1998. She is a regular panelist on Meet the Press.

Thursday, September 29, 2011
7:45am  Continental Breakfast
8:15-9:15am  Forum

The City Club on Bunker Hill
333 S. Grand Avenue, 54th Floor
Los Angeles, CA 90071

Tickets: $20, $35 includes Granholm's book

Jennifer M. Granholm was elected governor of Michigan in 2002 and re-elected in 2006. She was born in Vancouver, Canada, grew up in California, and is an honors graduate of both the University of California at Berkeley and Harvard Law School.  She began her career in public service as a judicial clerk for Michigan’s Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals. She became a federal prosecutor in Detroit in 1990.  Granholm was elected Michigan’s first female attorney general in 1998. She is a regular panelist on Meet the Press.

The economic hurt that happened across America happened first, and most brutally, in America’s manufacturing heartland: Michigan. Jennifer Granholm, the state’s first female governor, tells how one state struggled and pioneered ways out of a perfect economic storm.

In January, 2002, Jennifer Granholm was the first woman ever to be sworn in as governor of Michigan—the eighth largest state in the nation, home to America’s auto industry, a state economy bigger than that of Saudi Arabia or Greece.  She came into office with youthful energy, optimism, and a determination to jump-start progress on several fronts, from diversifying the state’s economy to reforming its educational system.

Then reality struck—in the form of an inherited fiscal crisis, economic collapse, and predictable yet unforeseen breakdowns from hospital systems to the energy grid.

In a A Governor’s Story, Granholm gives a first-hand account from the front lines of a series of battles that exploded first in Michigan and that now are sweeping across all America: the battle to repair health care, educational, and infrastructure systems suffering from decades of neglect; the battle to rebuild a manufacturing base crippled by dramatic technological changes and unfair foreign competition; and the battle to restore hope and fairness to an economic system in which the few prosper even as the many suffer.

A Governor’s Story is also a frank exploration of what happens when ideology and political gamesmanship collide with human needs.  Michigan’s efforts to solve problems like devastating unemployment and out-of-control budget deficits demonstrated the bankruptcy of such traditional responses as “lower taxes,” “less regulation,” and “smaller government”—all of which accelerated, rather than reversed, the state’s decline.

She steered Michigan toward unprecedented private-public partnerships with clean energy businesses and the auto industry in a way to revolutionize its entire manufacturing base. She completely restructured workforce training through the No Worker Left Behind program.

Granholm shares  revealing stories about politics, economics, and the often-misunderstood connections between them, A Governor’s Story offers vital lessons not just for policy makers and business leaders but for anyone seeking insight into the challenges facing America in today’s tough times.