- Pritzker Fellows
- Former Fellows
- Jennifer Granholm
Jennifer Granholm
Former Governor of Michigan, Educator & Political Commentator
Biography
Former two-term governor of Michigan Jennifer M. Granholm, who is credited with leading Michigan though a period of unprecedented economic challenge and change, is an authority on leadership; politics; economic diversification; clean energy policy; advanced manufacturing; and industrial clusters.
Granholm became the first woman to be elected as governor of Michigan in 2002, and in 2006 she was re-elected with the largest number of votes ever cast for governor in the state. As a result of the meltdown in the auto industry and the global shift in manufacturing jobs, Michigan had the toughest economy in the nation and Granholm worked relentlessly to diversify it, adding new jobs and emerging sectors, such as clean energy, to Michigan’s economic portfolio. As a result of her leadership, Michigan led the country in the improvement of job market conditions between 2009 and 2010, according to the Gallup Job Creation Index.
As governor, Granholm pioneered clean energy policies and worked with business and labor, Republicans and Democrats to create new economic opportunities and jobs in Michigan. She led an aggressive strategy to make Michigan the hub of clean-energy development in North America by developing entire supply chains in Michigan, fostering critical partnerships between industry, government and researchers and by creating economic incentives that made Michigan the place to locate. Granholm’s plan included specific clustering strategies targeted at battery manufacturing, bio-energy, solar, and wind power.
In addition to diversifying Michigan's economy, Granholm focused on creating jobs, attracting international investment, improving education, and training Michigan’s workers to promote the state’s long-term economic health. She pushed Michigan to double the number of college graduates and signed into law a college prep curriculum for every high school student in Michigan, in addition to some of the toughest turnaround requirements for low-performing schools in the nation. In 2007, she launched the No Worker Left Behind program, which gave unemployed and under-employed citizens the opportunity to attend community college or technical school and receive training for high-demand jobs by offering state-paid tuition to Michigan’s displaced adults.
Granholm was Governor of Michigan from 2003-2011. Prior to her two terms as governor, Granholm was Michigan’s attorney general from 1998-2002. After leaving public office, Granholm joined the faculty at UC Berkeley, teaching courses in law and public policy, and was named a senior research fellow at the Berkeley Energy and Climate Institute. In that capacity, Granholm is chair of the American Jobs Project, a major research initiative focused on state-based policies to create advanced manufacturing jobs in clean energy. Granholm is a senior contributor to CNN, is the CEO of Granholm Mulhern Associates, and serves on several boards. She is also the co-author of the political bestseller, A Governor’s Story: The Fight for Jobs and America’s Economic Future and was a senior partner on jobs and energy policy during Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign.
Seminars
“Leadership on a State Level: A Governor’s Perspective”
States can be laboratories for democracy. As chief executives of their states, Governors often have the opportunity to innovate, experiment and implement strategic plans much more nimbly and flexibly than the Federal government. But how do they do it? What is the Governor’s role in developing and running that laboratory to achieve effective policies? As Governor of Michigan from 2003-2011, Jennifer Granholm led the state through a period of unprecedented economic change and had to develop a strategy to transform the state economy, which was suffering from the decline of the auto industry and the sharp decrease in manufacturing jobs. By the end of her tenure, Michigan led the country in improvement of job market conditions, according to the Gallup Job Creation Index.
In this seminar series, Gov. Granholm will discuss the strategies she employed for job creation and economic growth, the leadership that was required to implement change and how Michigan’s policies can apply to developing national policies for clean energy and job growth.
Since 2000, the U.S. has lost 5,000,000 factory jobs. Yet contrary to popular belief, more of these jobs have been lost to technological advancement than to outsourcing and trade, which accounts for just 13% of lost manufacturing jobs. So what is government's role in taking care of these disintermediated workers? In this seminar, we’ll have a conversation about some of the trends in artificial intelligence - particularly the autonomous vehicle, but other forms of automation also - and discuss how to help workers and communities adapt to these accelerating technology trends.
How does a state develop a comprehensive strategy for building a clean energy economy? What state resources must be taken into account? Using her experience transforming the Michigan economy into a growth economy, and her more recent research towards a national clean energy policy, Governor Granholm will discuss how to create a national clean energy policy through the states, from the bottom up.
As the chief legal officer of the state, the state attorney general not only serves as counsel to the legislature and state agencies, but also as the “people’s lawyer” protecting the rights of all state citizens. How does the attorney general work as a public advocate? How do they decide when to challenge or support state and federal policy? Where and how are they most effective? Before she was Governor, Jennifer Granholm was Michigan Attorney General from 1998-2002. In this seminar she examines the role and accomplishments of State Attorneys General with Illinois’ Lisa Madigan with examples from both Michigan and Illinois.
Special Guest: Lisa Madigan, Illinois Attorney General
At a tumultuous time, this country needs to encourage Millennials to lead, to not be bystanders to the partisan carnage in Washington, DC. Governor Granholm and her husband, Dan Mulhern, a popular professor teaching Leadership at UC Berkeley, will engage seminar participants in a discussion about leading from a position of authority, leading without authority, leading in teams and even navigating one's personal life through a life in public service.
Guest Speaker: Dan Mulhern, Distinguished Professor of Business and Law at UC Berkeley