The Roundtable

Jim Clinton
Director, Southern Technology Council
Jim Clinton views New Orleans from a regional perspective. After 10 years as president of the Louisiana Partnership for Technology & Innovation, Clinton joined the Southern Technology Council in April 1999. Now the 53-year-old pioneer works to diversify New Orleans' economy and spark innovative business conversations.

"The Louisiana Partnership for Technology & Innovation has contributed to the community by encouraging conversations about growth, studying opportunities, and working to understand the impact of a strong research program on community businesses," he says. "We bring together resources from the academic, political, and private sector in an effort to reinvigorate and diversify the Louisiana economy. We focus on startups and early-stage opportunities that emerge from the private sector or academic sectors."

Harold E. Doley, Jr.
Founder and Chairman, Doley Securities, Inc.
A distinguished member of the New Orleans business community, Harold Doley, Jr. was the first African-American member of the New York Stock Exchange when he began his career there in 1972. Three years later, Doley founded his own financial firm -- the realization of a dream that began with a childhood curiosity for business fostered inside his father's local grocery store. Doley Securities, Inc. specializes in "raising capital for securities issuers, providing secondary market services for institutional investors, and furnishing financial advisory services to institutions, corporations, government and political subdivisions."

"New Orleans is going to have to move beyond tourism as one of its prime economic thrusts because tourism does not require the type of talent that is necessary to service modern industries," Doley says. "New Orleans has to diversify its economy and the skills of its labor force."

Brady Finney
Director of Operations, New Orleans Technology Council
Born and raised in New Orleans, this 28-year-old change agent recently returned to his native turf after living in Boston for 10 years. Analyzing sales and marketing strategies for local companies, Brady Finney helps advance the NOTC's mission to integrate the efforts of business, government, education and venture capital. "The New Orleans Technology Council wants to help city government understand the benefits of bringing the technology industry into this city. We say, 'Look, if Computer Associates moves an office here, it's either going to hire 10 local programmers at $65,000 to $125,000 a year or it's going to bring in workers who will buy houses and grow the community. That's economic development.'"

Carla Fishman
Director of Research & Technology, Tulane University
Throughout her nearly 20-year career at Tulane University, Carla Fishman has observed academic advances of all kinds at competing universities. All those years of surveillance have taught Fishman a valuable lesson about New Orleans' growth potential: In order to forge ahead in research and technology, she says, the city's intellectual community must form an unwavering partnership. "By trying to compete in individuals silos, we can't make giant strides. If we are going to move forward in this state, we need to do it together."

Under her guidance, Tulane University will join Louisiana State University to create a pioneering gene therapy initiative, which educators and business leaders hope will plant the state firmly on the map for cutting-edge bio-tech research. "Here's a real opportunity for us to work as a state," Williamson says. "We want to foster a climate that's conducive to biotechnology in Louisiana, and the state legislature has approved $6.8 million for creating that infrastructure."

Bob Gayle
Executive Director and CEO, New Orleans Chamber of Commerce
Bob Gayle says the New Orleans business community must work to not only entice employees from other regions, but retain local talent in order to attract more and more high-tech companies and young entrepreneurs.