Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen,
Thanks for the warm welcome. I appreciate very much the invitation to come today. I’m really glad to be back in this great city. It’s good to be in a room full of accomplished women.
I enjoy being in the company of entrepreneurs, risk-takers，dreamers and doers. You all share a lot of common experiences. You’ve met challenges of starting a business. And that’s hard. It required more time than you had in a day, more money than you kept in your bank, and more energy than you thought you had. But you chose an interesting life-you chose to lead. You chose to follow your dreams.
As we know, nearly half of all small businesses are owned by women. Firms owned by women are being started at more than twice the national rate. The entrepreneurial spirit is alive and well. I appreciate your spirit. You’re making the country a better place by working as hard as you do.
This is a land of great wealth, and it’s a land of great opportunity, and you’re seizing the opportunity. Through the hard work of our people, the innovation of our businesses, and the good policies now in place, we have put a recession behind us. Thanks in large part to your hard work, our economy is expanding, productivity is p, unemployment has been falling, incomes are rising-and we’re going to stay on this path of growth and prosperity.
Thank you.
