The following is attributable to Spokesperson Tom Babington:

United States Agency for International Development (USAID) Deputy Administrator Bonnie Glick traveled to California to meet with private-sector leaders in Silicon Valley and San Francisco from July 22 to July 26.

On July 22, Deputy Administrator Glick met with senior executives from eBay to discuss how the company's initiatives can support women's economic empowerment. She also met with senior-level officials of IBM and focused on the use of large amounts of existing data sets (Big Data) and the power of IBM artificial intelligence (AI) to create decision-making tools around pandemic disease spreads, the new technologies around biomes and food safety, the scientific developments around recycling ocean-polluting plastics and other trans-boundary water management issues.

On July 23, Deputy Administrator Glick participated in a roundtable with the African Diaspora Network (ADN) to explore how USAID can best build new private-sector partnerships with diaspora entrepreneurs to accelerate self-reliance in their home countries. Deputy Administrator Glick also visited Visa headquarters to talk about ways that USAID and Visa can work together to support safe and inclusive digital financial services and infrastructure around the world. Following her meeting with Visa, Deputy Administrator Glick met with a senior representative of Village Capital and VilCap Investments to discuss how USAID's Missions can better create new private-sector partnerships that support early-stage enterprises and foster more inclusive partnership models, particularly with women entrepreneurs.

On July 24, Deputy Administrator Glick met with leaders from Google to review a number of projects on which USAID and the company have collaborated and future areas for collaboration on the Next Billion Users and with Google.org. She also also participated in a round table at Stanford University's Freeman Spogli Institute (SPI) for International Studies, where she shared ways that USAID promotes citizen-responsive governance and integrates democratic principles in development to counter great powers.

Deputy Administrator Glick went to IDEO to meet with senior representatives of OpenIDEO and IDEO.org to discuss the importance of private-sector partnerships in development and how the use of human-centered design by the two organizations can strengthen development tools. Deputy Administrator Glick later met with leaders of Gap, Inc., and thanked Gap for their continued partnership with USAID in India to support women's empowerment, expand access to water and sanitation, and improve water stewardship. She also discussed other sectors that may benefit from USAID and Gap's combined expertise, interests, and investment.