With our focus this week on GE’s newly-issued Citizenship Report, we thought it would be a good time to also check in with a couple of recent stops made by GE’s John Rice. As a GE Vice Chairman whose divisions include healthcare, aviation, transportation and enterprise solutions, John has recently been speaking about the importance GE places on investing in technology and innovation during economic downturns. That also means investing in education. He recently addressed the Atlanta Press Club, where he talked about the intersection of innovation, healthcare and education. Excerpts can be heard in this video clip.
As John told the audience, when it comes to economic downturns, “you don’t weather those storms unless you have a view of the long-term.” That applies to everything, he says, from investing in engines, to tackling healthcare, to focusing on education with progams such as the $150 million that the GE Foundation is putting to work in schools in six cities as part of its expanded Developing Futures in Education program.
*Hear John’s full speech at the Atlanta Press Club
John’s focus during a recent interview on Milwaukee public radio was exclusively on education and GE’s support of the city schools’ Science, Technology, Engineering and Math programs. As part of the smaller-scale program, GE Healthcare employees from the area are working in selected schools to help improve performance in those fields. “We really believe that in terms of competitiveness, for the U.S. to win in the long run we got to have great public school systems,” John says in the WUWM interview.”
* Listen to the full WUWM radio interview
“It’s a very exciting effort to invest in a sustainable future,” he continues. “If you get young students excited about this, you’ll increase the likelihood of their graduation, their test scores will go up, and more of them may consider engineering disciplines when they think about life after high school — and that plays to our competitive advantage, quite frankly. For us to win in the long run, we’ve got to have great technical teams.”
* Learn more about the GE Foundation’s Developing Futures in Education program
* Read GE’s Citizenship Report
* Read the announcement about the report being issued
* Read Part 1 of our series: Citizen GE
* Read Part 2 of our series: Citizen GE
* Read Part 3 of our series: Citizen GE
* Read Marc Gunther’s blog about the report
* Read the Sustainable Development & Competitive Advantage blog
* Watch a video about our Stakeholder Advisory Panel
* Read Jeff Immelt’s comments about citizenship in his recent speech
