Kevin Klowden is Executive Director, MI Finance for the Milken Institute, where he is focused on leading efforts to address issues of economic mobility for individuals, workers, businesses, and populations. In this role, he is developing and leading programmatic efforts to identify key best practices and implement solutions to create opportunities for economic mobility. In this role, he draws on his long experience and expertise with the Institute, where most recently served as Chief Global Strategist, focusing on issues of regional economic competitiveness, sustainability, technology-based development, and the modernization of trade. In his role leading the Institute’s Center for Regional Economics, he focused on issues connected to job creation, tech-based development, small business access to capital, and California's role in the global economy. Klowden is the lead author of numerous publications, including 'A Hollywood Exit: What California Must Do to Remain Competitive in Entertainment and Keep Jobs' as well as 'Strategies for Expanding California's Exports' and the recently released “Benchmark Research Commercialization and Technology Transfer” for Victoria, Australia. He has written about the importance of a skilled and educated workforce in maintaining regional competitiveness and the need for small and mid-sized businesses to increase exports to grow the economy. He writes a regular LinkedIn column on issues of economic mobility and has been widely cited on labor and economic issues in Hollywood during the most recent strikes. A frequent speaker, he currently serves on multiple advisory boards, including for the U.S. Export-Import Bank, the Los Angeles Regional Export Council, and Asia Society of Southern California, and spent five years as Chair of the Trade Finance Advisory Council for the U.S. Department of Commerce. Klowden holds graduate degrees from the University of Chicago and the London School of Economics, where he studied the economic development of urban commercial cores and competition for cities becoming centers of global finance.