Press briefing on the Presidential Summit on Entrepreneurship by Senior Administration Officals

PRESS BRIEFING ON THE
PRESIDENTIAL SUMMIT ON ENTREPRENEURSHIP
BY BEN RHODES, DEPUTY NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISOR FOR STRATEGIC COMMUNICATIONS; PRADEEP RAMAMURTHY, NSC SENIOR DIRECTOR FOR GLOBAL ENGAGEMENT; FRANCISCO SANCHEZ, UNDERSECRETARY FOR INTERNATIONAL TRADE, DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE; JUDITH MCHALE, UNDERSECRETARY FOR PUBLIC DIPLOMACY AND PUBLIC AFFAIRS, DEPARTMENT OF STATE

Via Teleconference

2:08 P.M. EDT

MR. RHODES:  Thanks, everybody, for joining the call.  We wanted to take this opportunity to walk you through the Presidential Summit on Entrepreneurship that we’ll be hosting on Monday and Tuesday.  I’m joined by some of my colleagues here at the NSC, as well as the Department of Commerce and Department of State, which are hosting the call; and you’ll all have the opportunity to talk to them as well.  I’ll just say a few words and give you the agenda for the summit.

To begin with, this was a direct commitment that the President made in his Cairo speech last June.  The context for it, of course, was the President was addressing a range of very important political and security issues that have really dominated the focus of the United States and many countries and particular regions around the world.

In the speech he addressed, for instance, our effort to defeat al Qaeda, the war in Iraq, Iran and its pursuit of a nuclear program, as well as, of course, the Arab-Israeli conflict.  However, he also made the point that even as we continue to work very aggressively to address these issues and to resolve these conflicts, that the United States wanted to build and deepen a set of partnerships with Muslim communities around the world on issues that are really fundamental to our own lives related to education and economic opportunity, and science and technology, and health, and that by building those partnerships we can serve our mutual interests and advance a more positive relationship between the United States and Muslim-majority countries around the world.

So we really see this as one of a series of steps that we’ve taken to do so, to fulfill the commitments the President made in Cairo.  I’ll quickly walk through a few of them.

We’ve appointed several science envoys to travel to different regions of the world to deepen our scientific cooperation.  We’ve pursued a partnership with the Organization of the Islamic Conference to eradicate polio, which continues to be a great challenge in a number of Muslim-majority countries.  We’ve expanded educational programs and initiatives in particular countries around the world and are going to look to continue to do so, of course against the backdrop of working very hard in a very focused way onto political and security issues that are of great concern to the United States and to people around the world.

One of the commitments the President made was on entrepreneurship.  We believe entrepreneurship is a fundamental American value, and it’s also a force that has the ability to unlock opportunity for people around the world.  And some of my colleagues can speak in greater specificity to that.

So we believe that it’s both an area that over the very long term we can develop a set of partnerships around the world that can serve the interests of communities as well as the interests of the United States and countries around the world in unleashing economic growth and development.

This summit is just a part of that process.  We believe that it can serve the purpose of catalyzing action, and it already has, frankly, in private-sector follow-up, foundation follow-up, follow-up actions by other countries in many different regions of the world.  So we believe that this is an important opportunity for the United States to galvanize that action.

I would note, for instance, that the President hosted 47 leaders and heads of government at the Nuclear Security Summit just two weeks ago.  This of course is a different kind of engagement.  We’re hosting no government officials as a part of this.  This is a summit that is going to bring together entrepreneurs — social entrepreneurs, people from various — many different countries, and again my colleagues can speak to that — around this question of how we can galvanize entrepreneurship on behalf of economic growth.

With that, I’ll just walk through the agenda, and then let my colleagues speak to some more specifics.  The whole summit, by the way, will be live-streamed, so this will all be available to people around the world