As the 38th U.S. Secretary of Commerce, Penny Pritzker is a key member of President Obama’s economic team, with 27 years of private sector experience. Before joining the Obama Administration, Pritzker founded and ran five different businesses in the real estate, hospitality, senior living, and financial services industries. Since taking office in June 2013, she has worked closely with the business community and helped advance the President’s priorities of expanding growth and opportunity for all Americans. Guided by conversations with more than 1,600 CEOs and business leaders, and over one-third of the Fortune 500 CEOs, Secretary Pritzker has developed the “Open for Business Agenda.” This bold strategic plan and policy blueprint for the Commerce Department focuses on expanding trade and investment, unleashing government data for economic benefit, spurring innovation, protecting the environment—and executing these priorities with operational excellence as careful stewards of taxpayer dollars. In a keynote address to the AMS Washington Forum, Secretary Pritzker announced that NOAA is forming new alliances to help bring its vast data resources to the public. Partnerships such as those with Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, IBM, Google, and the Open Cloud Consortium help address the growing need for access to NOAA’s huge—and rapidly growing—environmental data resource. Secretary Pritzker earned her bachelor's degree in economics from Harvard University and J.D. and M.B.A. degrees from Stanford University. The informal discussion with Secretary Pritzker in this Presidential Town Hall will be moderated by NOAA Administrator Dr. Kathryn Sullivan. For additional information, please contact Marni Goldberg mgoldberg@doc.gov.

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