Eating breakfast, but its time to get started. Feel free to continue eating. Breakfast is important, but welcome to the Nations Capital. Were very pleased to welcome you to d. C. And to the academys annual meeting and Public Policy forum. Id like to extend a special welcome to our firsttime attendees and particularly to new academy members. We hope that all of you will find our program over the next day and a half informative and stimulating. I would encourage you to take some time to connect with each other and interact with our speakers, so you get the very best and the very most you can out of our time together here. Were very proud to offer a tremendous lineup of speakers. They represent a wide range and deep range of Public Policy issues and professionalism issues. What better place to do this than the Nations Capital . And just days before a national electi election. Was halloween recently. I hope we were all scared a little bit in a positive and lifeaffirming way. Many of us fin