Republican Small Business Leadership Team - First Meeting a Success!

By Judy B. Lloyd, Co-Chair
NOVEMBER 16, 2009

The first planning meeting for the Republican Small Business Leadership Team has occurred and I wanted to report in for those of you whose schedules did not allow you to make the call.

Based on the success of the Presidential Power Teams of 2008, WIPP asked New Mexico's Robin Otten to chair the team along with co-chairs Kansas City's Nancy Zurbuchen of Motional Media and myself, Judy Lloyd of Altamont Strategies in Pleasanton, California.

Now you might think of this as the "loyal opposition" but in reality, this team was formed to lend balance to our policies with the change in the Administration and Congress. We've come together in a positive way to affect change provide a Republican perspective to add our voice more fully to WIPP's Government Relations team.

The meeting opened with Chairwoman Robin Dozier Otten describing our mission of (1) Providing balance at Instant Impact Meetings; (2) Providing the Republican voice when needed with Republican Members of Congress; and (3) having a dialogue on how we can best position ourselves as the "go to" girls for policy discussions that impact women business owners within the Republican Party.

We were joined on our call by Ann Sullivan who runs WIPP's lobbying activities on our behalf in Washington, D.C. and WIPP's President Barbara Kasoff, who further outlined how we can help WIPP to better engage with Republican Members of Congress.

We are planning another call in coming weeks to discuss our survey results from earlier this year and discuss ideas on how we, as Republican WIPP members, can have a stronger grassroots voice on issues that are so important to us like health care, technology, regulation, access to capital, the economy and jobs.

I got some great ideas on how we can engage more businesswomen in California and across the country in the public policy discussion. We talked about having businesswomen like California Gubernatorial Candidate Meg Whitman and California U.S. Senate Candidate Carly Fiorina participate with the Republican Small Business Leadership Team so we can engage them on public policy and learn trade secrets from them that will make our businesses stronger.

We look forward to working with out counterparts on the Democrat Small Business Leadership Team to find common ground on issues before the Congress on Capitol Hill.