>> Male Speaker: If you ever go out to conferences,
you'll find that most of what comes out of those
conferences are stories told by those up on stage.
They're not up there talking about empirical information,
numbers, and that type of thing, but they're telling a
story about their experience, their program,
their project, and it's very important and you walk away
feeling good about it.
But we just don't do enough of that.
And I think that the agency would benefit greatly if we
taught people more how to tell stories so that they
can bring together all the nuances and really show how
well we're doing as an agency.
[music playing]
[applause]
>> Male Speaker: Hello there.
So when I was a kid growing up in Washington D.C., I had
one dream.
I wanted to be a doctor.
I wanted to help people.
So you can imagine how I felt when I got that
rejection letter from the very last medical school
that I applied to.
Crestfallen.
And I remember it was 1971.
I was sitting at the kitchen table.
My mom was reading the newspaper and she came over
to me and said to me -- she pointed to an article and
she said, "Here's an article in here about this brand new
fledgling agency called the Environmental Protection
Agency and its mission is to take care of human beings
and the environment, human health.
Maybe you should look into this.
You know, you want to help people.
If you joined EPA you would be able to help people, but
the big difference is if you were a doctor, you'd have
about 100 patients.
If you go work for EPA, you would have one patient that
is very, very big and it matters to everybody."
So shortly thereafter, I joined EPA.
I've been here 44 years and I'm still standing.
[laughter]
Between then and now, I got married.
I raised, with my wife, seven children.
We're raising two more grandchildren.
I did say seven children so you can groan with me if
you'd like.
[laughter]
And it was always sort of interesting around the
dinner table at the Murray household because everybody
around the table had their own stories to tell.
Everybody had their own woes and their own problem.
My daughter, Rebeca, who was good friends with Julie
yesterday and now Julie is good friends with Stephanie.
Her world's falling apart.
And my son, you know, thinks that the world is terribly
unfair because nobody is giving him the money he
needed for a video game.
And then Nolan, well, we never quite figured out what
Nolan was thinking at any given time.
But my wife and I were always trying to come up
with creative ideas, innovative ideas to take all
of this individual talking and turn it into more of a
communal communication.
It was great fun.
But it was that experience that actually translated
into an experience at EPA that I really wanted to
share with you today.
About four years ago I was sitting around another
table, but this table had individuals from several
different federal agencies.
We had all come together to talk about sustainability in
American manufacturing.
So as the meeting progressed, each agency
individually talked about their individual programs
and their individual budget woes and their individual
issues and problems and we were about halfway through
and I thought I'm back at my dining room table.
The only difference is there's no melodrama here.
Maybe a little, but no melodrama.
[laughter]
And when it came around to my turn, I talked about the
wonderful programs that we have here at EPA, especially
pollution prevention programs which is what I was
working and am working on.
And then I offered a suggestion, an observation.
I said as we walked around the table and everybody
talked about their individual programs, they
were all very, very good and they were very, very
positive and you were getting great things done
and touching the manufactures, but none of
talked about how we could unify all that and bring it
all together.
Wouldn't it be better for American manufactures in
American communities to be able to do that?
Bring it all together for them?
So that day is when we invented this thing called
E3 which stands for Economy, Energy, and the Environment.
It's a framework.
It's not prescriptive.
And in short, what it does is it provides to American
communities the wherewithal to organize themselves
around the issues that are most important to them.
And then we take all of our resources from these various
federal agencies all related and we unify them and we
provide technical assistance to those communities to help
them help themselves meet their sustainability goals.
It's that simple.
And the communities are loving it.
They're using it.
They're sharing with us a lot of experiences right now
and I love it because it's been one of the more
innovative things I've ever been associated with in my
tenure here at EPA.
So let me just end with another observation.
When I joined the agency in 1971, we were facing some
pretty nasty domestic issues environmentally.
We had rivers catching fire.
We had fish kills occurring all over the United States.
We had Love Canal.
We had Times Beach.
And the agency attacked all of these problems and over
the years we solved those problems.
But our job is far from over because the environmental
problems that we're looking at today are no less
egregious than what we had in 1971 but the big
difference is they're global more than domestic.
So like E3, if we're going to solve these problems, we
all have to work together, not only within the agency
but across federal agencies, because we only have one
patient and that patient matters to all of us.
Thank you.
[applause]
[music playing]
I think when I brought up my family situation and some of
the past history, I saw a lot of nodding heads so
obviously a lot of them have children.
They know what it's like to sit around the dining room
table with their kids.
So I think that they relate.
[music playing]