Jennifer Clark, Director of the Center for Urban Innovation in the Georgia Tech Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts and Associate Professor at the Georgia Tech School of Public Policy, was recently named to a new University of Virginia Miller Center commission that is focusing on job creation for small and medium-sized manufacturers. The effort is part of the Milstein Symposium: Ideas for a New American Century, a new Miller Center initiative that is addressing challenges facing America’s middle class.

The symposium brings together policymakers, business leaders, scholars and journalists to define and advance innovative, nonpartisan, and action-oriented ideas and policies to help rebuild the American Dream. The first year will focus on renewing middle class jobs, and three commissions will examine topics in manufacturing, entrepreneurship and self-employment, and infrastructure investment.

The program is co-chaired by former Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour and former Indiana Governor and Senator Evan Bayh. Other members of the commission on manufacturing include:

• Rebecca O. Bagley, president and chief executive officer, NorTech, a technology-based economic development organization focusing on Northeast Ohio
• Aaron Bagshaw, president, WH Bagshaw Co., the oldest pin manufacturer in the United States
• Matthew Burnett, founder, Maker’s Row, a company endeavoring to simplify the manufacturing process by connecting designers to domestic manufacturers
• W. Bernard Carlson, chair, U.Va. Department of Engineering; professor of science, technology and history, and the commission’s lead scholar
• John Engler, president, Business Roundtable; former governor of Michigan
• James Fallows, national correspondent, The Atlantic
• James Manyika, director, McKinsey Global Institute; senior partner, McKinsey & Company
• Kate Sofis, executive director, SFMade, a non-profit corporation working to bolster San Francisco’s economic base through local manufacturing
• Howard Wial, director, Center for Urban Economic Development, University of Illinois, Chicago

“For generations, small- and medium-sized manufacturers have provided stable, good-paying jobs for middle-class Americans,” said Bayh. “As we move rapidly into the 21st-century global economy, we need fresh thinking to ensure that these companies can continue to grow and put people to work.”

Barbour said, “The public has understandably lost confidence in Washington’s ability to generate common-sense, bipartisan solutions to our nation’s challenges. This commission will bring together policymakers, scholars, industry leaders and other stakeholders to craft those solutions – the type of people that can achieve broad consensus and develop actionable ideas, not just more rhetoric.”

The commission is expected to release recommendations in February.

Funding for this initiative was provided by philanthropist, business and civic leader Howard P. Milstein.

More information on the Milstein Symposium is available at http://millercenter.org/conferences/2013/milstein.