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 The Potomac Conference is a CEO-level leadership forum that brings together public, private and nonprofit executives to focus their expertise and influence on improving the regions economic health and quality of life.
The Potomac Conference has evolved from a two-day retreat convened by the Greater Washington Board of Trade over a decade ago. Fifty leaders attended the National Capital Region Leadership Retreat in May of 1992 to discuss the regions future, begin to articulate a vision for that future, and build the necessary relationships and trust to execute regional plans. The goals of that gathering were to:
- Foster closer relationships and trust among the regions private and government leaders to enable them to work together for the benefit of the region;
- Think collectively about the future of the region; and
- Set a regional agenda that promotes cooperative approaches to ensure a prosperous economy and an outstanding quality of life.
The structure of the Potomac Conference has varied since it was organized as an ongoing program of the Greater Washington Board of Trade in 1993, transitioning from a core group of CEOs and political leaders to a network of several hundred, including participants from the nonprofit community and corporate staff. During the past decade, the programs governing committee has selected issue areas and invited experts from around the country to discuss model programs. Through this process, area leaders have developed a vision and five key commitments intended to achieve it. Committees were established to fulfill the commitments and report their progress to the group at subsequent meetings. The issue areas include Innovation and Entrepreneurship; Inclusion and Participation; Education and Lifelong Learning; Quality of Life; and Regional Thinking and Action.
Two recent initiatives of the Conference illustrate its breadth of work. The first of these seeks to establish more functional partnerships among the Greater Washington regions centers of innovation to foster more rapid commercialization of technology in the area. In addition to a substantial private sector high-tech presence, the region boasts over $8 billion in federal research and many hundreds of millions more in university-based research each year. The Potomac Conference aims to enable the region to capitalize more profitably on these resources.
The second initiative focuses on improved coordination and understanding between first-response agencies and the news media in the event of major emergencies or terrorist attacks, with the purpose of serving the sometimes-competing interests of public information and effective emergency response. The effort was launched last June at a seminar entitled Media and the First Response, which featured key government and media experts reacting candidly to a hypothetical terrorism scenario moderated by Mike McCurry, former White House press secretary, David Gergen of the Kennedy School of Government, and 20-year media veteran and former CNN bureau chief Frank Sesno.
For more information on the Potomac Conference, contact Caroline Cunningham, Director, at
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