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Blog Entries from June 2016

Microgrids: Powering and Preparing Alaskan Villages for Economic Growth


EDA Deputy Assistant Secretary Matt Erskine Touring the Alaska Center for Energy and Power (ACEP) Through Secretary Pritzker’s leadership, the Department of Commerce is executing a bold policy agenda focused on U.S. trade and investment, innovation, and data. These core areas reflect the department’s role as the voice of business and embody the attributes of a globally competitive economy. And they signal that the United States and the Department of Commerce are indeed, “open for business,” and focused on economic growth and job creation.

In addition to the trade, innovation, and data priority areas, the Department’s “Open for Business” agenda includes a critical environment pillar focused on providing communities and businesses with information, products, and services that help them prepare and prosper in a changing environment. Among our policy priorities in this space is developing the next generation of climate observing systems, developing stronger disaster resilience standards for buildings and infrastructure, and maintaining world-leader weather forecasting capabilities.

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Spotlight: A Core Commitment: EDA Creates Ladders of Economic Opportunity


Assistant Secretary Jay Williams with local and federal representatives at Nashville Promise Zone announcement. Since taking office in 2009, President Obama has pursued place-based policies to leverage investments by focusing resources in targeted locations and drawing on the compounding effect of well-coordinated action.

Presently, to best serve our communities, the Federal government is collaborating like never before to catalyze these local plans to drive job creation.

By pursuing placed-based policies and by breaking down Washington silos, we are best able to seed local strategies to spur regional economic growth.

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Success Story: Virginia Innovation Partnership Spurs Commercialization of New Technologies


UVA President Teresa Sullivan and Deputy Assistant Secretary Matt Erskine at the 2012 announcement of VIP. Photo Credit: UVAToday In 2012, the University of Virginia was awarded an i6 Challenge grant and created the Virginia Innovation Partnership (VIP) to help fund and facilitate the best of Virginia’s college and university researchers’ ideas and technologies with the goal of commercialization.

The i6 Challenge is a part of the Regional Innovation Strategies (RIS) Program. EDA’s Office of Innovation and Entrepreneurship (OIE) leads RIS to spur innovation capacity-building activities in regions across the nation.

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Highlight: Administration visits Connecticut to Tout Progress Under the State’s IMCP Designation


Assistant Secretary Jay Williams touring Asnuntuck Community College’s Advanced Manufacturing Center. For more than 100 years, the state of Connecticut has been a leader in the aerospace and shipbuilding industries. Building off of the state’s strong reputation for manufacturing, in 2015, the Hartford region was designated an Investing in Manufacturing Communities Partnership (IMCP) community. On June 3, EDA Assistant Secretary Jay Williams and Jason Miller, White House Deputy Director of the National Economic Council visited the Connecticut Advanced Manufacturing Communities (AMC) Region to see the region’s progress first-hand.

The visit began with a roundtable discussion and student-led tour of the Asnuntuck Community College’s Advanced Manufacturing Center, the site of the AMC’s pipeline and apprenticeship programs. Young men from the Boys & Girls Club of Hartford’s Passport to Manhood Program joined Assistant Secretary Williams for the tour and roundtable discussion. This engagement was coordinated as a part of the White House’s My Brother’s Keeper (MBK) initiative, which Assistant Secretary Williams serves as an Ambassador.

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