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WASHINGTON, D.C. - W. James (Jim) McNerney, Jr., chairman, president and CEO of The Boeing Company, will address Illinois small businesses Nov. 10 in Chicago about expanding their sales in foreign markets and creating U.S. jobs. The presentation will be made at a half-day seminar organized by six federal agencies at the Fairmont Chicago.

We are delighted to have Jim McNerney as a keynote speaker at our Chicago Exports Live! Seminar. As America's largest exporter, Boeing is directly responsible for employing tens of thousands of skilled U.S. workers at its facilities and indirectly at the thousands of small- and mid-sized U.S. businesses that supply Boeing with components and services, said Fred P. Hochberg, chairman and president of the Export-Import Bank of the United States (Ex-Im Bank), one of the six sponsoring agencies of the seminar. His insights and experience gained at Boeing and throughout his impressive career will be invaluable to seminar attendees.

McNerney, who has held his current posts at Boeing since July 2005, will be a keynote speaker at Exports Live! Real Deals, Real Profits, an eight-city seminar series. The seminars share strategies and partnerships used by local small and medium-size businesses that already have discovered how to increase profitability through exporting.

The event includes feature presentations and Q & A sessions by successful small-business exporters that have benefited from government export services and solutions. Representatives of the government organizations providing these export services also are on the program and available later in the day to offer one-on-one consultations.

The Chicago seminar follows events in New York, Boston, Miami and Houston, and precedes similar sessions in Los Angeles (Nov. 16), Seattle (Nov. 17), and Detroit (Dec. 11). About 800 small businesses, lenders, brokers and trade specialists have attended the first four seminars.

Leading the meetings will be the heads of Ex-Im Bank, the U.S. Department of Commerce, the Small Business Administration, the U.S. Trade and Development Agency, the Overseas Private Investment Corporation, and the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative.

McNerney has served as a member of Boeings board since 2001 and oversees the strategic direction of the Chicago-based $60.9 billion aerospace company. Previously he was chairman of the board and CEO of 3M, a global technology company, and before that held top executive positions at General Electric Company including president and CEO of GE Aircraft Engines.

Before joining GE, McNerney worked at Procter & Gamble and McKinsey & Co., Inc. He is a director of Procter & Gamble, a director of IBM, and a former chair of The Business Council and the US-China Business Council. He earned a B.A. degree from Yale University and an M.B.A. from Harvard University.

For more information and to register for the nearest Exports Live! seminar, visit www.export.gov/exports_live/ or call toll-free 1-(888) 966-2009. Please note that space is limited.

NOTE TO EDITORS: To clarify: the web site address for more information is www.export.gov/exports[underscore]live/ In other words, there is an underscore between exports and live