Gary Torgow, Chairman of Huntington National Bank to Give Opening Keynote at PuLSE Institute 2024 Economic Conference

DETROIT, MICHIGAN, UNITED STATES, July 24, 2024 /EINPresswire.com/ -- Gary Torgow, a prominent business leader, who is the chairman of Huntington National Bank, the 20th largest bank in the nation, has been named the opening keynote speaker at this year’s conference on economic freedom organized and hosted by The PuLSE Institute, Detroit’s national and independent non-partisan anti-poverty think tank.

The poverty-themed conference will be held virtually this year on Wednesday, September 25, from 8:30 a.m.-12:00 pm and will feature solution-oriented keynote presentations and cutting-edge about how to address the salient issues of poverty and inequality in urban America including Detroit, one of the nation’s largest Black cities, and one of the most impoverished in the country.

Registration for the conference will be announced at a later date.

The September gathering is the institute’s annual racial and economic justice conference for policy makers, scholars, industry captains and community advocates working towards creating an ethical economy that guarantees equality for all.

The theme for the 2024 conference “Economic Security and Justice for All: An Inclusive Mandate for Closing America’s Racial Wealth Gap,” will examine the state of the economy including the nation’s housing crisis, the state of small business as well as discuss how corporate America must respond to the needs of underserved communities and the need to push for meaningful racial diversity and inclusion in business.

Torgow, a widely respected business leader is the chairman of Business Leaders for Michigan, which is a roundtable of the top 100 CEOs of the state’s leading companies, and serves on the public company boards of DTE Energy, and Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan, one of the state’s largest medical insurers.

At The PuLSE Institute conference, he will speak about the crisis of affordable housing in Detroit and around the nation and why the dream of homeownership needs to reach those who are the bottom of the economic scale.

“I am pleased to serve as the opening keynote speaker at The PuLSE Institute’s 2024 National Conference on the Economy. The theme of Economic Security and Justice for All highlights the urgent need for affordable housing in Detroit and nationwide. This conference is an important platform to discuss solutions for closing America’s racial wealth gap and ensuring economic security and justice for all. I am honored to be part of this effort,” Torgow said in a statement.

Torgow, who serves as president of the Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Detroit and Yeshiva Beth Yehudah is a trustee of The Skillman Foundation and the Community Foundation for Southeast Michigan, two of Michigan's largest philanthropic enterprises. He is an internationally recognized speaker who recently gave the keynote at the Black and Latino Economic Summit in Tampa, Florida, and the H3 Summit in the United Kingdom.

Attorney Tina M. Patterson, (https://www.linkedin.com/in/tinampattersonesq/) the President and Director of Research at The PuLSE Institute underscored the importance of the conference’s theme.

“At The PuLSE Institute, we are committed to ideas that challenge the status quo and generate expansive public policy to include those too often left in the economic gaps of society,” Patterson said. “This is especially critical at this juncture in time, given the upcoming national presidential election that may be a history making event.”

Patterson, a distinguished attorney with a decade of legal expertise and prolific public commentary on issues shaping this era added, “As African Americans and other racial minorities continue advancing, we must ensure policy guardrails that allow more to ascend, rather than follow historic trends that tend to restrict. This country is abundant in opportunity. Expanding economic opportunities and access will only increase the nation's prosperity and well-being. With this third edition of our conference, we are looking forward to engaging conversation on how we can continue moving the needle forward toward economic progress for all.”

Bankole Thompson (https://www.linkedin.com/in/bankole-thompson-b82097110/), the nationally acclaimed Detroit journalist whose longstanding and influential work on race, democracy and poverty inspired the founding of The PuLSE Institute, said the conference will highlight the important work that needs to be done to close the wealth gap.

“Economic freedom should not mean freedom to homelessness. It should not mean freedom to destitution and despair. That is why this conference is important to have a real conversation about requisite solutions with captains of industry from diverse sectors on the critical need to address the glaring disparity we see not only in housing, but also across all facets of our national life,” said Thompson, who serves as the executive dean of The PuLSE Institute. “Nowhere is the crisis of income inequality more prevalent and the urgency to address these issues than in places like Detroit, where there is an opportunity to bend the arc of the moral universe towards justice.”

Thompson, a standard-bearer for economic justice issues, is a twice-a-week opinion columnist at The Detroit News, where his column on the presidency, public leadership, culture and economic issues appear on Mondays and Thursdays in the newspaper. His latest book Fiery Conscience, released last August to wide acclaim about his decades of speaking truth to power received a definitive review in Forbes magazine in April of this year, underscoring the national impact of his work. The book was also listed as a reference for future scholars and students in the Jean Blackwell Hutson Research and Reference Division of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in New York, the world’s leading repository on the global Black experience.

“We must examine the factors that lead to income inequality,” Thompson added. “That is part of the focus of The PuLSE Institute conference because unless we are willing to discuss the roots causes of the crisis, we are not going to make a significant improvement on the lives of those who are locked in the corridors of economic disparity with no exit sign.”

The PuLSE Institute’s high-profile speaker platform over the years has attracted significant public officials and prominent business leaders who have appeared before the organization to discuss important issues. For instance, previous speakers include United Nations Under-Secretary General Dr. Natalia Kanem, former U.S. ambassador to the European Union Anne Derse, Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, Dr. Julius Garvey, the last remaining son of Marcus Mosiah Garvey, DTE Chairman and CEO Jerry Norcia, Strategic Staffing Solutions President, CEO and Founder Cindy Pasky among others.

The institute has a National Advisory Board (https://thepulseinstitute.org/national-advisory-panel/), made up of national and international luminaries who believe in the mission of the organization and collectively bring more than a century of anti-poverty work and championing equitable policies. They include Sister Simone Campbell, leading social justice voice in the American Catholic Church, who received the 2022 Presidential Medal of Freedom, Rev. Dr. Bernard LaFayette Jr., veteran civil rights leader, and one of the last remaining top lieutenants of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Luba Lukova, internationally celebrated visual artist, Charles E. Blake Sr., Presiding Bishop Emeritus of the Church of God in Christ, the late Dr. Arun Gandhi, the grandson of Mahatma Gandhi, Janis Kearney, former presidential diarist under President Bill Clinton and other leaders.

More speakers about the September conference will be announced in the weeks. For inquiries about the conference send an email info@thepulseinstitute.org.

The PuLSE Institute
The PuLSE Institute
info@thepulseinstitute.org