We are delighted that club Patron and candidate for San Diego City Council District 1, Barbara Bry is a co-presenter at this month’s meeting. Barbara has spent the last 30 years of her life helping to start companies and create jobs from her early days at CONNECT to becoming an entrepreneur and serving on the initial management team of companies like ProFlowers.com.
Mary Walshok is an author, educator, researcher, and Associate Vice Chancellor for Public Programs and Dean of Extension at the University of California San Diego. She is a thought leader and subject matter expert on aligning workforce development with regional economic growth.
Mary is the co-author of Invention & Reinvention, the evolution of San Diego’s Innovation Economy. In the preface, she writes that our city is a paradox— the desire of citizens to build a world class city with only minimal investments and/or costs in terms of taxes, environmental stewardship, labor conflicts or infrastructure development. We want to have our cake and eat it too.
San Diego’s economy has long been dependent on federal funds with 50% GDP today coming from federal sources to support, military functions, defense contracting companies and basic research such as on the Torrey Pines mesa.
Barbara and Mary will emphasize the importance of innovation to San Diego’s future. They’ll dive into the history and what it means to local citizens to have companies that operate in a global arena – where we put our priorities will be shaped by these forces.
We can’t solve local problems outside a globally traded economy and understanding education, health care delivery and urban and environmental planning.
This will be a fascinating and informative discussion with two of the most involved and connected individuals who understand the intersection of technology and society and how it will alter our lives in San Diego.
4:00PM – 5:30PM
Point Loma Assembly, 3035 Talbot St, San Diego, CA 92106
For additional info call (619) 800-5098
Directions and parking information
Social Time
Members are encouraged to get together from 3:30PM before the meeting starts, please bring whatever light drinks/snacks that you’d like to share.
After the meeting ends we suggest adjourning to the nearby Seaside Pho & Grill, 1005 Rosecrans St, to continue our progressive conversation. The owner, Thuy Nguyen, has extended Happy Hour until 6:30pm.
Barbara Bry
Barbara Bry is a high tech entrepreneur and community leader who worked her way through college and grad school, earning a Master’s Degree in Business from Harvard. As a single working mom, Barbara was on the founding team of several local high-tech companies, including ProFlowers.com, which has created hundreds of local jobs.
A leader in the San Diego business community, Barbara taught entrepreneurship at UCSD and founded an organization that supports the advancement of women in the tech sector. As a business journalist, she has also spotlighted the vibrant small business community that supports our City’s economy and was honored as Small Business Journalist of the Year for San Diego and Imperial Counties by the Small Business Administration.
Barbara has deep roots in the community and has lived here for almost 35 years. She is married to Neil Senturia, raised her two daughters here, and is a proud Grandmother. She served as President of the Board of the Children’s Museum of San Diego and as Vice Chair of the San Diego Jewish Community Foundation. She also is a two-time Bobby Sox team manager for her daughters.
As the first high-tech entrepreneur on the City Council, Barbara will bring her enterprising and relentless mind-set to City Hall to keep San Diego safe, clean and prosperous. Barbara will work to create more good paying high-tech jobs and help small businesses grow, so that we can invest in maintaining San Diego’s quality of life by fixing our streets; protecting our beaches, bays, and parks; and conserving our water supply.
Mary Lindenstein Walshok Ph.D.
Mary WalshokMary Lindenstein Walshok is an author, educator, researcher, and Associate Vice Chancellor for Public Programs and Dean of Extension at the University of California San Diego. She is a thought leader and subject matter expert on aligning workforce development with regional economic growth.
She is the author of more than 100 articles and reports on regional innovation, the role of research institutions in regional economies and workforce development. She has authored and co-authored numerous book chapters and articles on the world of work, including: Blue Collar Women (1981), Knowledge Without Boundaries: What America’s Research Universities Can Do for the Economy, the Workplace, and the Community (1995), Closing America’s Job Gap (2011) and Invention and Reinvention: The Evolution of San Diego’s Entrepreneurial Economy (2013).
As an industrial social scientist studying the dynamics of regional economic development and transformation, Walshok has studied various communities across America. She has evaluated 13 WIRED regions funded by the U.S. Department of Labor, studied three innovative regions for a National Science Foundation-funded project, and assessed one region’s efforts to grow an industry for a Lilly Foundation-funded endeavor.
As head of the continuing education and public programs arm of UC San Diego since 1981, Walshok oversees programs that educate more than 61,000 enrollees annually, which translates to more than 25,000 students in over 4,400 courses. She oversees a staff of 230 employees and an annual budget of more than $50 million. Walshok has developed outreach efforts to help accelerate the San Diego region’s economic vitality, assure a globally competitive talent pool and help college graduates transition to employment areas that are in higher demand. She also helps provide access to a vast array of regional intellectual resources through the award-winning UCSD-TV and nationwide through UCTV, which reach over 4 million households and millions more around the globe through on-demand Internet downloads.
During her tenure Walshok has played an active part in helping the University expand its local impact, national reputation and global reach. UC San Diego — one of the ten campuses in the world-renowned University of California system — has rapidly achieved the status as one of the top 50 institutions in the world for higher education and research.
Walshok is the recipient of numerous awards including the Kellogg Foundation’s Leadership Fellowship and induction into Sweden’s Royal Order of the Polar Star. Active on boards of a number of arts and philanthropic organizations, Walshok chaired the boards of the San Diego Community foundation during 2002-2004 and the International Community Foundation during 2007-2009. She is currently serving on the boards of San Diego CONNECT (which she helped found in 1985), the La Jolla Playhouse, the United States-Mexico Foundation for Science, International Community Foundation, and the Girard Foundation.
A native of Palm Springs, California, she received her bachelor’s degree in sociology from Pomona College in 1964, her master’s degree in sociology in 1966 and her Ph.D. in sociology in 1969 from Indiana University. She has been a visiting professor at the Stockholm School of Economics for many years and in 2004 held an international appointment in the department of continuing education at Oxford University in England.
POINT LOMA & OB DEMS 