Most Powerful Women Summit 2024: America’s 250th
Rosie Rios, Chair, America 250
Interviewer: Maryam Banikarim, Managing Director, Fortune Live Media; Co- chair, Fortune MPW Summit
Interviewer: Maryam Banikarim, Managing Director, Fortune Live Media; Co- chair, Fortune MPW Summit
Category
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TechTranscript
00:00Now, remember, we are going to take audience questions.
00:02So I'll start the conversation,
00:04but get ready to ask your questions.
00:06Rosie, what should we know about America 250?
00:09First of all, thrilled to be here.
00:11I haven't attended this event since before the pandemic,
00:13and I got to tell you, I feel like I'm back at home.
00:16So thank you.
00:16Thank you so much.
00:18Hi, Patty.
00:20So I got to ask you all this question.
00:22Who remembers the Bicentennial of 1976?
00:26Right? Thank you.
00:27So do I.
00:28I was 11 years old, and I remember it like it was yesterday.
00:32It's not an event.
00:34It's a feeling.
00:35And if you remember July 4th, as I do,
00:38July 4th, 1976, I was born and raised in Hayward, California.
00:41It was a cloudy night,
00:42but those fireworks were never brighter.
00:45I was never more proud to be an American.
00:47And as a fifth grader,
00:48I just felt like the world was my oyster.
00:50My parents came from Mexico in 1958
00:52to find a better life in California,
00:55and I am living the American dream.
01:00So when I think about this, this is not a moment.
01:04It's a movement.
01:05It's a journey that our country has never taken before,
01:08and I'm privileged and thrilled to take the lead.
01:10Okay, I can feel the passion in your voice, right?
01:14But let's talk about the fact
01:15that America is pretty divided today.
01:18Do you think something like America 250
01:20can bridge that divide?
01:21Absolutely, and look, it's already happening.
01:23So when I took this on,
01:24I was appointed onto this congressional commission,
01:27which is established by legislation, 24 members.
01:3016 of them are private citizens.
01:31Eight of them are standing members of Congress.
01:33Four from the Senate, four from the House.
01:3524 equally Democrat and Republican,
01:38and thankfully, no political ideology
01:41has made its way through any of our conversations.
01:44We're a fully functional commission,
01:45and in fact, we just approved our full programming
01:48this last March, and we're hitting the ground running.
01:50The beauty of this is, I think, twofold.
01:53One is we wanna make sure
01:54that it's all partisan, bipartisan, nonpartisan.
01:57Two is, when I became chair officially two years ago,
02:00September of 2022, I made two pledges.
02:03One, it has to be community-based.
02:05It has to be sea to shining sea.
02:07We established, or we pledged to establish,
02:1056 state commissions.
02:13So every state, the District of Columbia,
02:15and the five occupied territories
02:16all had to establish their own state commission,
02:19because if you think about our history, right?
02:20Look back to 1776.
02:22Alaska was Russia.
02:24Hawaii was its own kingdom.
02:25California was Mexico and Spain.
02:28We doubled our footprint
02:29with the Louisiana Purchase with France.
02:30Texas had, at one point, six different flags flying over it,
02:33and all of that is the indigenous and slave experiences.
02:36So every state has to tell their own story.
02:39Today, we have, ready for this,
02:4253 state commissions established, only three left,
02:45and all have executive orders
02:47on the governor's desk to move forward.
02:49So any second now, we'll have 56.
02:50The other pledge that I made, ready for this?
02:52I wanted to be, I will, we will be,
02:54the largest bipartisan, bicameral
02:57congressional caucus on the Hill.
03:00Why is that important?
03:01Because we're a congressional commission.
03:03So to have this bipartisan support with Congress
03:05was very important.
03:06For anyone who knows congressional caucuses,
03:08they're very hard to establish and even harder to grow.
03:09The average size is 20 to 40 members.
03:12Just to give you some context, the Adoption Caucus,
03:15how safe can that be?
03:16It's one of the largest caucuses at 145.
03:18We are at 216, crazy.
03:22But here's the beauty of it,
03:22almost exactly half Democrat, half Republican.
03:25I couldn't have tried to do that.
03:26So the two metrics that I wanted to use two years ago
03:28are actually happening.
03:29I think people really want this to happen.
03:32What's the timeline?
03:33Because here we are, and you have a roadmap ahead of you.
03:36Yeah, well, it already started.
03:37So, I mean, look, the two things
03:39you're always gonna hear from me is awareness and action.
03:41If you were to go on the street right now
03:42and ask people what's happening of historical significance
03:44in 2026 for our country, barely anyone would say
03:47it's the 250th anniversary of the signing
03:49of the Declaration of Independence.
03:50But here's why it's important.
03:52So first of all, I mean,
03:53we are the oldest democracy in the world, right?
03:55This is, again, that journey.
03:56This is that movement, not the moment.
03:59So we literally started this public initiative
04:03last July 4th.
04:05Our first big event was in the great state of Wisconsin,
04:08nice purple state.
04:09We launched with Major League Baseball
04:11at the Milwaukee Brewers against Chicago Cubs game
04:13called America's Invitation.
04:15That's basically inviting the American public
04:16to take this journey with us.
04:18You can go on our website right now,
04:19americatrophy.org, and submit your video
04:20on your memories, your ideas,
04:22what you wanna think about for 2026.
04:24So that already happened.
04:26In addition to that, we just finished our pilot program
04:29of our first big trophy program,
04:32which is called America's Field Trip.
04:34America's Field Trip is a national student competition
04:36for grades three through 12, asking the question,
04:39what does America mean to you?
04:40Here's the beauty of it.
04:42The award recipients, 75, get to choose
04:44from these backstage experiences,
04:46most of which had never been offered to the public before.
04:49So we just finished that.
04:50And by the way, the National Park Service,
04:51along with the Smithsonian National Archive
04:53Library of Congress, also part of our commission.
04:55So they're the ones who are offering
04:56all these great experiences.
04:57So I did the field trip with some of these kids this summer.
05:00It wasn't just the tour of the Statue of Liberty.
05:02We went up to the Crown.
05:03We went to Ellis Island, and no one else was there.
05:06We were hosted by the CEO of BNY, Robin Vince,
05:09for lunch, where he took us to the market room,
05:11the trading floor, the Cybersecurity Command Center.
05:13We ended the day at the New York Federal Reserve
05:15getting an overview of monetary policy
05:16and getting into deep storage.
05:18And I'll tell you, I can summarize that
05:19by saying there was one high school young woman
05:22who came up to me and she said,
05:23I feel like I won the golden ticket,
05:25but this is better than Willy Wonka.
05:27So our goal is to provide those memories, right?
05:30Those generational experiences that we'll never see again.
05:33Kind of like the memory you shared from Utah.
05:35Absolutely, again, it's a feeling.
05:37Any questions?
05:38I wanna turn on the lights so I can see
05:40if we have any questions from the audience.
05:43Okay.
05:45While you come up with your questions,
05:46because I know you have them,
05:48let's talk about the role the business can play
05:51in America 250.
05:52You have a lot of power in this room.
05:54How can we help?
05:54Well, thankfully, we are federally appropriated,
05:56but I made it clear to Congress,
05:58look, for every dollar that we get,
05:59I wanna match that one for one.
06:01And it has to be a public-private partnership.
06:03There has to be skin in the game.
06:05Thankfully, again, BNY was our major sponsor
06:07for America's field trip.
06:09Goldman Sachs, Facebook, Walmart is our major sponsor
06:13for one of our upcoming initiatives
06:15called Our American Story.
06:16You can go online, american250.org,
06:18and you can actually nominate whose story
06:21you think should be preserved in perpetuity
06:23at the Library of Congress.
06:24So we're taking this nomination process now
06:26all the way through next July 4th,
06:28and then we're gonna get on the road.
06:29So Walmart is sponsoring these air strains.
06:31We're getting out.
06:32We're going to all parts of the country.
06:33We're going to tribal nations, the Deep South,
06:36rural America, faith-based communities,
06:39farming parts of our country,
06:41and unbury those stories that we know have never been told.
06:44And again, we want to find those stories of Main Street.
06:47We want to find, maybe it's your uncle
06:49who served in the Vietnam War.
06:50Maybe it's your grandfather who remembers World War II.
06:53Maybe it's your mother who came here by herself
06:56like my mom did and raised all nine of us
06:57as a single parent and sent all nine of us off to college.
07:00So those stories should be remembered
07:03and should be preserved.
07:04So that is our goal with these three initiatives
07:06already out the gate.
07:07You can already participate in every single one of them.
07:09Okay, I know we have a question over there.
07:12Thank you so much, and thank you for all you're doing.
07:14I'm curious about, there are two pieces
07:18that, you know, in the Declaration of Independence,
07:21excuse me, you talk about all men being equal.
07:23And so we're in a room full of women.
07:25And in addition to that, we're now living in a time
07:29where even the concept of freedom is so politicized.
07:32And so I'm curious for you, with those two things,
07:35how is the commission thinking about,
07:38you talked about sea to shining sea,
07:39but how are you thinking about those
07:41who are almost explicitly not included?
07:44Yeah, absolutely, and that's a really great point.
07:46Like there's a reason why we're the oldest democracy
07:48in the world, it didn't just happen overnight.
07:49First of all, the American Revolution did not end in 1776.
07:53Right, it took two continental congresses
07:55for us to form our government.
07:56And then it wasn't until 12 years later, after 1776,
07:59where the Constitution was ratified.
08:01And then it was the following year, 1789,
08:03when George Washington became president.
08:05Our kids, a lot of kids don't know that story,
08:07how long it took for us to have
08:09and be that oldest democracy in the world.
08:11That's why this isn't a one and done, this isn't a moment,
08:13this is that journey, and perhaps a journey, again,
08:16that our country's never taken before.
08:17And it's not just, again, look, I mean,
08:20my goal is to make this the most comprehensive
08:22and inclusive celebration and commemoration
08:25this country's ever seen.
08:26But let's not forget, I mean, us here,
08:28for anyone who knows me, I'm the one who led,
08:30initiated and led the efforts to put the portrait
08:32of a woman on a Federal Reserve notes
08:33for the first time in U.S. history.
08:35That hasn't happened yet.
08:37We just kind of bypassed what happened in 2020.
08:40What happened in 2020 of historical significance
08:42for our country, for this room here, more than anyone?
08:45It was the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment.
08:48It kind of came and went, right, in 2020.
08:51A lot of people don't realize,
08:52that was probably it for us in terms of
08:55a historical milestone for women of that significance.
08:58There's not another one like that.
09:00I want to reclaim that.
09:02The National Women's History Museum
09:03is one of our national resource partners
09:05who's making sure that women's history
09:07is included in this.
09:08This is 51% of the population.
09:11And again, look, for me, this is as much about the future
09:14as it is the past.
09:15We've been trying to plant those seeds of inspiration
09:17for this next generation of leadership
09:19to understand why they've been given this gift.
09:22If you look at the typical profile
09:24of a millennial and post-millennial,
09:26they don't trust institutions.
09:27They're very cynical, they're very pessimistic.
09:29So giving them something to believe in,
09:31everything that we're doing is actually,
09:32a lot of it is geared towards them.
09:34A lot of it is thinking about, again,
09:36how to inspire this next generation.
09:37Let's not forget those other three passages
09:39of the Declaration of Independence
09:40that are so important for all of us.
09:42Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
09:45My goal in 2026 is to make as many Americans as possible
09:49feel like this is the land of opportunity all over again.
09:52Okay, that's the last word from Rosie Rios.
09:54Thank you for joining us.