David L. Calhoun
President and CEO, The Boeing Company

Suzanne Clark
President and CEO, U.S. Chamber of Commerce

David L. Calhoun - Speaker Bio

David Calhoun is president and chief executive officer of The Boeing Company. He oversees the strategic direction of the Chicago-based aerospace company, which employs more than 140,000 people worldwide and leverages the talents of a global supplier base. Boeing is the world’s largest aerospace company and leading provider of commercial airplanes; defense, space and security systems; and global services. As a top U.S. exporter, the company supports commercial and government customers in more than 150 countries. 

Calhoun, 63, became Boeing president and chief executive in January 2020. He has served as a member of Boeing’s board of directors since 2009 and served as chairman of the company’s board of directors from October to December 2019. 

Calhoun has extensive expertise in a wide array of strategic, business, safety and regulatory matters across several industries as a result of his executive, management and operational experience. 

Prior to leading Boeing, Calhoun served as senior managing director and head of portfolio operations at The Blackstone Group from January 2014. During his time with the investment firm, he focused on creating and driving added-value initiatives with Blackstone’s portfolio company CEOs. 

Previously, he also served as executive chairman of the board for Nielsen Holdings from January 2014 to January 2016. He joined Nielsen in 2006 as chief executive officer shortly after it was acquired through a consortium of private equity investors, including Blackstone. Throughout his seven-year Nielsen tenure, Calhoun led the company’s transformation into a leading global information and measurement firm listed on the New York Stock Exchange and Standard & Poor’s 500 Index. 

Calhoun began his career at The General Electric Company (GE), where he rose to vice chairman of the company and president and chief executive officer of GE Infrastructure, its largest business unit. During his 26 years at GE, he held a number of operating, finance and marketing roles, and led multiple business units, including GE Transportation and GE Aircraft Engines. 

Calhoun is a member of the board of directors of Caterpillar Inc. and a member of the Business Roundtable, an association of chief executive officers of leading U.S. companies. He also is a member of Virginia Tech’s Pamplin Advisory Council. 

A native of Pennsylvania, Calhoun holds a bachelor’s degree in accounting from Virginia Tech. He is co-author of the book “How Companies Win” and is an avid golfer and skier. He is married with four children. 

Suzanne Clark - Speaker Bio

Suzanne Clark is president and chief executive officer of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, a director on two corporate boards, a former business owner, and an entrepreneur at heart. 

With a global perspective and a fierce commitment to free enterprise, Clark’s experience in the private sector deeply informs her leadership of the U.S. Chamber—the world’s largest business organization representing employers of every size and sector in Washington, D.C., across the country, and around the globe.

Clark has led a multiyear effort to strengthen the Chamber’s well-known influence, advocacy, and impact, while modernizing its work and attracting new members from the fastest-growing and most innovative sectors of the U.S. economy. These efforts to invest in the Chamber’s future proved prescient when the COVID-19 pandemic hit in 2020, enabling the organization to quickly pivot to new ways of working and successfully advocate for businesses in the midst of the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression.

Clark has also helped drive the national conversation on issues central to managing and recovering from the pandemic through the U.S. Chamber Foundation’s Path Forward program. In interviews with dozens of thought leaders and experts such as Dr. Anthony Fauci, former CDC Director Dr. Robert Redfield, Bill and Melinda Gates, Carlyle Group Founder David Rubenstein, and former U.S. Surgeon General Jerome Adams, Path Forward has reached an audience of millions of viewers with practical information, insightful guidance, and forward-looking strategies.

In an era of divided government and partisan gridlock, the U.S. Chamber has been a bold leader in championing bipartisan solutions and building coalitions around the issues most important to the business community, including liability reform, workforce development, corporate governance, business-led climate solutions, and programs and policies to address inequality of opportunity.

Clark spearheaded efforts to dramatically increase support for small businesses through the creation of CO—, the Chamber’s award-winning digital home for small business. When the pandemic hit, the Chamber launched a massive mobilization to save America’s small businesses by proposing key policies included in the CARES Act, lobbying for and securing replenishment of the Paycheck Protection Program, producing dozens of practical guides used by millions of businesses, and creating the #SaveSmallBusiness grant program. 

Clark’s commitment to free enterprise and understanding of the challenges facing America’s businesses stem from her experience creating and running a growing company. Prior to rejoining the U.S. Chamber in 2014, she acquired and led a prominent financial information boutique—Potomac Research Group. Before that, Clark was president of the National Journal Group (NJG), a premier provider of information, news, and analysis for Washington’s political and policy communities. Through 2010, Clark led NJG through a period of rapid digital transformation, resulting in record-level profits and multiple journalism awards.

Earlier in her career, Clark served in multiple leadership positions at the U.S. Chamber, including chief operating officer, and as chief of staff at a major transportation association. 

Clark serves on the boards of two public companies and several nonprofit organizations. At AGCO, a Fortune 500 global leader in the design, manufacture, and distribution of agricultural equipment, she chairs the Compensation Committee and is a member of the Succession Committee. At TransUnion, a provider of global risk and credit information, she serves on the Audit and Cybersecurity committees.  

Additionally, Clark serves on the board of The Economic Club of Washington, D.C., and So Others Might Eat (SOME), which helps the poor and homeless in the nation’s capital. She was named SOME’s Humanitarian of the Year in 2019. Other awards and recognition include Washingtonian magazine’s Most Powerful Women in Washington (2019), the National Association of Corporate Directors Directorship 100 honorees (2020), the Baldridge Foundation’s Award for Leadership Excellence (2021), and Washingtonian magazine’s inaugural Most Influential List (2021).

Carrying her passion for business and entrepreneurship into the classroom, Clark is a 2021 Spring Fellow at American University’s Sine Institute of Policy & Politics, where she leads a lecture series on the role of private sector job creation.

Clark earned a B.A., magna cum laude, and an M.B.A. from Georgetown University. She lives in Virginia with her husband and their daughter.