My goal in the new administration is to engage all of the stakeholders, everyone who can help us meet the challenges of the 21st century, and ensure that we work together.

A new era of responsibility is here.

Change is never fast enough to satisfy us. I still hear too many stories of women who go back to work too soon, but I do believe that we have been able to change the paradigm in attitudes towards family leave in that it's no longer a nice thing to do for women, it's a must do for competitiveness, and that's a big change over the last seven years. Changing it into an economic issue is a big sea change in the last seven years.

For me, having a daughter made me much more efficient and productive. I would wake up in the morning trying to figure out how to organize my day so that I could get home. The phone calls with friends, the lunches out with colleagues - all of that got scrapped so that I could be as efficient and productive as possible.

If left unchecked, global change will create violent conflict, torrential storms, shrinking coastlines, and irreversible catastrophe.

The last six months of the Bush administration lost four million jobs and the first six months of the Obama administration lost another four million before any initiatives of the president could take action.

Part of what makes America strong is our resilience, tenacity, innovation and our willingness to be optimistic about our future. I know that President Obama is absolutely the best president to lead our country in the right direction.