My Platform:  Listen to small business owners to create a more pro-business policy orientation.  Cut corporate taxes. Expand enterprise zones.  Revamp Maryland’s economic development programming so that it focuses more on creating and retaining long-term, quality jobs for Marylanders.  Provide more online skills training both for small business owners and managers, and for current and prospective workers.  Create new financial incentives to reduce the growing blight of vacant commercial rental space in our neighborhoods.  Make it easier for minority, women, and veteran owned companies to obtain state contracts.

 

My Experience:  I helped manage and grow Booz Allen Hamilton’s international online education business which grew to employ more than 150 people.  I was founding Chief Executive Officer of the popular MyJewishLearning.com website which grew to employ over a dozen people.  I held the federal government’s top economic development post, Deputy HUD Assistant Secretary for Economic Development, managing programs such as the multi-billion dollar Community Development Block Grant Program so important to Montgomery County and the State of Maryland.  I was a manager of the Cleveland, Ohio economic development agency, and paved the way for economic revitalization of predominantly Hispanic and African-American neighborhoods throughout that city.  I was urban policy advisor to the former New Jersey Governor.  And I staffed the bipartisan Congressional coalition, on behalf of former Democratic Congressman Roberto Garcia of the South Bronx, which led to legislative enactment of “urban enterprise zone” program so vital to Maryland and other states nationally.

 

I can therefore be a leader of legislative efforts in Annapolis to provide new approaches to job creation.