PROCEEDINGS - Industries of the Future - West Virginia - West ...

Industries of the Future — West Virginia
STRATEGIES FOR STRENGTHENING WEST VIRGINIA’S BASIC INDUSTRIES
Honorable Cecil H. Underwood
Governor of West Virginia
Introduced by Tom Burns, Executive Director, West Virginia Development Office
Thank you very much, Tom, for your generous introduction. It has been my good fortune to
work with Tom on a number of projects over the years. As he mentioned, he was one of the original
sponsors of Software Valley.
I appreciate the great work that Tom and the Development Office are doing. They are
accelerating our efforts to market more aggressively because we are now in a worldwide competitive
market. It's not a matter any longer of competing with another state, but it's competing with the rest of
the world. We simply have to market better. But we have a lot more going in our favor now with
which we can market than we ever did before.
Carl, it's a pleasure to work with you again. We’ve worked on a number of projects over the
years, and Carl gives meticulous attention to detail. I noticed that he addressed his first comment to the
glass industry, "The break is over!"
Dr. Mike Louis, thank you for hosting this meeting. Again, you do a great job in family
medicine and related educational activities here in the valley. Your activities and those with which
you’re associated are so important to the growth of our future.
Senator Jackson, I appreciate the interest that you take in so many things in the Senate,
particulary your leadership in the education field. I think you, perhaps better than any other member of
the Legislature, understand the important relationship between education and future economic
development.
We are honored to have Secretary Denise Swink with us. The program she's headed for the
last several years is very important to the future of our state. My first speech following my election last
year was at a meeting on Carbon Products at West Virginia University in Morgantown, sponsored by
the same organization that you have here today. I was excited about the potential of what I heard then
and I'm impressed that you’ve been able to move quickly into this important symposium. As I
understand it, this is the first state-level Industries of the Future meeting in the nation, and I'm glad that
West Virginia is being first in a positive, forward-looking program. Too often, we've been first in the
nation in costly, no-growth activities, but that's all turning around, and everything is moving positively in
the right direction now. The challenge we have in government, as well as the challenge you have in the
private sector and private industry across the state, is how do we take the momentum we have, keep it
going, and accelerate it everywhere we can?
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