Speakers

Senator Maria Cantwell

Maria Cantwell currently serves as a United States Senator for the State of Washington. As a respected leader - both in public service and in the private sector - Maria has always embraced the values she first learned growing up in a strong working-class family. With the help of Pell Grants, Maria was the first member of her family to graduate college. Later, a successful businesswoman in Washington's hi-tech industry, she helped build a company that created hundreds of high-paying jobs from the ground up. Maria was elected to the U.S. Senate in 2000, 2006, 2012, and again in 2018, pledging to honor the hard work and aspirations of the people of Washington state.

Throughout her time in the Senate, Cantwell has been a lead negotiator in numerous pieces of critical legislation. In 2021, Sen. Cantwell was elected by her Senate colleagues to chair the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation. In this role, Sen. Cantwell was the key architect of the CHIPS and Science Act, the largest investment in research, technology, and manufacturing in America's history, which was signed into law last August. This CHIPS and Science Act provided the Department of Commerce with $39 billion to incentivize domestic semiconductor manufacturing, including $2 billion set aside to support production of legacy chips primarily used in the auto industry. It also provided $11 billion to the Department of Commerce and $2 billion to the Department of Defense to develop and prototype the next generation of semiconductors in the United States.