John Bryson was appointed by President Obama as the 37th Secretary of Commerce and sworn into office on October 21, 2011. Bryson has nearly three decades of business experience, including 18 years as Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Edison International.

Secretary Bryson will be a key member of President Obama’s economic team and will work to implement the administration’s top economic priority: accelerating job creation. He will work to strengthen the economic recovery and U.S. competitiveness, and serve as a voice for the business community in the president’s Cabinet.

As Commerce Secretary, Bryson will oversee an agency charged with helping make American businesses more innovative and successful at home and more competitive abroad. He will focus on achieving the President’s National Export Initiative goals of doubling U.S. exports by the end of 2014; implementing historic reform of the U.S. patent system; overseeing the president’s SelectUSA initiative to encourage more companies–American and foreign–to establish or expand U.S. operations to create more jobs for the American people; and, strengthening America’s manufacturing sector including the small- and medium-sized manufacturers.

Bryson will also lead the effort to foster new economic development clusters that take advantage of regional strengths; expand the country’s broadband infrastructure and effectively manage its spectrum as America gears up to build a national, interoperable wireless network for first responders; strengthen U.S. coastal communities and our weather and oceans science, promote sustainable fisheries and our fishing industry and support critical satellite programs; and, continue the effort to reform a Cold War-era export control system.

Bryson served as Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Edison International, the parent company of Southern California Edison and Edison Mission Group, from 1990 to 2008. At Edison, he led the utility through the California energy crisis. As CEO, he created a competitive power subsidiary, the Mission Group, which expanded across the U.S and was a global leader in the privatization of power plants and electric systems in Australia, New Zealand, Thailand, the Philippines and several European countries.

Bryson has served as a director on several public, educational and non-profit boards, including The Boeing Company, The Walt Disney Company and has served as an adviser and a director of entrepreneurial and start-up companies including Coda Automotive, Inc. and BrightSource Energy. He was a senior adviser to the global investment firm Kohlberg Kravis Roberts (KKR).

Prior to joining the private sector, Bryson served as president of the California Public Utilities Commission and chairman of the California State Water Resources Control Board. Before joining Edison, Bryson was a partner in the law firm of Morrison and Foerster. Shortly after earning his J.D. from Yale law school, he and some classmates received a grant from the Ford Foundation to form the Natural Resources Defense Council in 1971.

Bryson is a graduate of Stanford University. He and his wife Louise have four daughters.