Connect, the San Diego non-profit that supports local technology and entrepreneurship, says it is opening an office in Washington D.C. “to be part of the process,” and to represent the interests of San Diego’s innovation community.
Establishing a lobbyist in Washington was a key part of an initiative that Connect CEO Duane Roth unveiled last summer that was intended spur San Diego’s innovation economy. Roth’s plan primarily called for increasing federal funding for research and development in San Diego, and for encouraging the formation of more elite research institutions here.
In a statement e-mailed this evening, Roth says Connect’s new advocate will focus in five areas: intellectual property (including trade and anti-trust); funding for basic research; regulatory issues; investment capital; and workforce development (i.e. foreign worker visas).
Connect says Roth has been working with a search committee to recruit a full-time advocate for the office, which will be at the University of California’s 11-story complex in northwest Washington. It was unclear how the position will be funded. In its statement, Connect says only that its board of directors supported “the establishment of a Washington office to provide a consistent presence and close relationships with legislative offices and Administration officials.”
Author: Bruce V. Bigelow
In Memoriam: Our dear friend Bruce V. Bigelow passed away on June 29, 2018. He was the editor of Xconomy San Diego from 2008 to 2018. Read more about his life and work here.
Bruce Bigelow joined Xconomy from the business desk of the San Diego Union-Tribune. He was a member of the team of reporters who were awarded the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting for uncovering bribes paid to San Diego Republican Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham in exchange for special legislation earmarks. He also shared a 2006 award for enterprise reporting from the Society of Business Editors and Writers for “In Harm’s Way,” an article about the extraordinary casualty rate among employees working in Iraq for San Diego’s Titan Corp. He has written extensively about the 2002 corporate accounting scandal at software goliath Peregrine Systems. He also was a Gerald Loeb Award finalist and National Headline Award winner for “The Toymaker,” a 14-part chronicle of a San Diego start-up company. He takes special satisfaction, though, that the series was included in the library for nonfiction narrative journalism at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University.
Bigelow graduated from U.C. Berkeley in 1977 with a degree in English Literature and from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1979. Before joining the Union-Tribune in 1990, he worked for the Associated Press in Los Angeles and The Kansas City Times.
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