Business Plan for America
Acknowledgements
Endorsements, citations, and recognition from organizations and leaders across the political spectrum who have engaged with or built on the Business Plan for America.
The Business Plan for America 1.0 reflects the insights and contributions of many Leadership Now members, outside experts, and policymakers.
Leadership Now convened business leaders across industries and geographies—within its membership and beyond—to inform this Plan. We conducted in-depth CEO interviews to explore industry perspectives, complemented by insights from leading thinkers, academics, and emerging leaders in MBA programs. Leadership Now also consulted extensively with policymakers on Capitol Hill and in state government, including more than 50 congressional offices and leaders of key congressional caucuses and committees.
We are particularly grateful to experts at the following think tanks, research institutions, and universities for their contributions to this ongoing body of work:
This Plan also builds on the wisdom of individuals whose thinking has shaped our work in lasting ways, including our longtime advisor Michael Porter, who published landmark reports on U.S. competitiveness in previous decades and urged us to pair any new report with sustained, vigorous advocacy from business to government.
We are deeply indebted to two advisors we lost, David Gergen and Paul Tagliabue, for their encouragement of business leaders bringing their skills to public service and their lifelong commitment to improving government’s capacity to meet our biggest challenges.
We were encouraged by the level of response and enthusiasm to Leadership Now’s MBA Policy Challenge, which engaged emerging leaders in developing bold, actionable proposals. Their ideas spanned AI workforce transition and reskilling, industrial policy and domestic manufacturing, affordability, AI governance, and energy and grid modernization, reflecting the spirit of bold thinking at the heart of this Plan.
The scale of participation reflected a genuine hunger among emerging leaders to engage with these challenges—and gave us confidence that the next generation of business leaders is ready to meet them.
282
students
34
universities
88
proposals submitted
MBA teams partnering with policy, law, and engineering students—typically in teams of two to four—representing 34 universities.
The work of translating this exceptional expertise into actionable perspectives was driven by an extraordinary group of Leadership Now members and staff who drafted policy papers, provided expert reviews, and participated in member discussions and meetings with outside experts and lawmakers.
We would like to especially thank the following members, who played a key role in conceiving, drafting, and editing specific chapters and helped shape the project as a whole. Their contributions were indispensable:
Leadership Now staff members including Alex Brockwehl and Dan Mathis spearheaded this project from start to finish, providing expert guidance and meticulous attention to detail throughout.