Katherine Gehl and Michael Porter: Why Competition in the Politics Industry Is Failing America

Commonwealth Club of California Podcast

Many Americans are horrified about the dysfunction and abysmal results from Washington, D.C., say Katherine Gehl and Michael Porter, and they argue that they have a realistic approach to changing this. They say our political problems are not due to a single cause but rather to a failure of the nature of the political competition that has been created—a systems problem. Come for a rare visit with two of America’s top business thinkers as they turn their focus to realigning America’s political system through the Gehl Porter politics industry theory. Katherine M. Gehl is a business leader, author and speaker. She was president and CEO of Gehl Foods, a $250 million high-tech food manufacturing company in Wisconsin, where she led a transformational growth strategy and received multiple awards before selling the company in 2015—in part to dedicate more time to political reform. Her career includes roles in the private and public sectors including at Oracle Corporation, Bernstein Investment Research and Management, Mayor Richard M. Daley’s office at the city of Chicago and Chicago Public Schools. In 2018, she co-founded Democracy Found, a Wisconsin-based initiative mobilizing a bipartisan group of leaders to implement electoral innovations in Wisconsin. She graduated from the University of Notre Dame and holds an MA from Catholic University and an MBA from Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. Michael E. Porter is an economist, researcher, author, advisor, speaker and teacher. Throughout his lifetime career at Harvard Business School, he has brought economic theory and strategy concepts to bear on many of the most challenging problems facing corporations, economies and societies, including market competition and company strategy, economic development, the environment and health care. He is the author of 19 books and over 130 articles and is the most-cited scholar today in economics and business. Porter graduated from Princeton University and holds an MBA from Harvard Business School and a doctorate from Harvard’s department of economics.

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