Deborah L. Wince-Smith

Deborah L. Wince-Smith is the president of the Council on Competitiveness, a premiere group of CEOs, university presidents and labor leaders committed to driving U.S. competitiveness. Most notably, she has spearheaded a national campaign that made innovation a top-tier national policy issue. She is recognized in the global business community as a “go to” person for strategic counsel, as exemplified by her 2004 appointment to the board of directors of the NASDAQ Stock Market.

Wince-Smith is an internationally known expert, author and speaker on global competitiveness, economic policy, science and technology, and economic development.

In 2006, she was nominated by President George W. Bush and confirmed by the U.S. Senate to serve as a member of the Internal Revenue Service Oversight Board. She is an appointed member of the Secretary of State’s Advisory Committee on International Economic Policy. Wince-Smith has testified before several committees of the U.S. House and Senate. She also serves on or chairs four Cabinet-level advisory groups, including a task force on nuclear energy for the Secretary of Energy. In 1989, she became the first Senate confirmed assistant secretary for technology policy in the Department of Commerce. Previously, she served in the Reagan administration as the assistant director for international affairs and global competitiveness in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.

Following her government tenure, Wince-Smith became active in governance of various national scientific labs.  She sits on the board of governors for Argonne National Laboratory and the University of California President’s Council for Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories. Wince-Smith was also a consultant for several Fortune 100 companies. Her practice focused on global competitiveness, R&D partnerships and international development agreements.

She has appeared on several international broadcast networks, including CNN, MSNBC, C-SPAN and Canada’s Report on Business Television. She is regularly interviewed by major newspapers like The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal as an expert on economic, science and technology policy. Her opinion pieces have appeared in publications such as The Hill, a leading newspaper that covers Congress, and she is a regular contributor to Innovation Magazine.

Throughout her career, she has been in the vanguard of the global competitiveness debate. She designed and negotiated the landmark 1988 Head of Government Science Technology Agreement with Japan and developed President Reagan’s 1988 Competitiveness Initiative. She later directed President George H.W. Bush’s National Technology Initiative. She began her career as a program director for the National Science Foundation from 1976-1984, where she managed U.S. research programs with Eastern European countries and U.S. universities.

Wince-Smith is a Magna Cum Laude and Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Vassar College. She received a master’s degree in classical archaeology from King’s College, Cambridge University. In 2006, Michigan State University conferred upon Wince-Smith the honorary degree of Doctor of Humanities. She volunteers her time on the board of directors of the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology and is a trustee of the National Inventors Hall of Fame.