THE VILLAGE

Exclusive Interview: Shirley Kwan-Hui on Protecting Consumers & Licensing Businesses

BY CHRISTOPHER JONES

There’s a new consumer-protection czar in town. And her skills and life experience are poised to help safeguard D.C. residents and visitors while ensuring safe and successful business practices in the nation’s capital.

Shirley Kwan-Hui, interim director of one of the District’s newest agencies, the Department of Licensing and Consumer Protection (DLCP) – created in October 2022 along with the Department of Buildings (DOB) following the splitting of D.C.’s largest agency, the Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs (DCRA) – knows how it feels to be an unprotected consumer, but understands the data-driven tools government can use to safeguard citizens’ lives while streamlining licensing requirements for businesses.

The Georgetowner spoke with Interim Director Kwan-Hui about her leadership vision, objectives, and the significance of the DLCP to people’s daily lives.

Kwan-Hui’s background story helps explain her empathetic approach. “I immigrated to the U.S. from Hong Kong at 11-years-old and lived in a one-bedroom apartment in New York [City] with eight people including my grandparents,” she said in a DCRA interview. “So, I was already becoming the main translator for my family as soon as I stepped foot in the U.S.” she told The Georgetowner. Just “navigating all the government services” opened her eyes to the challenges of language and cultural barriers. “I know that when both of my parents lost their jobs, we actually had to find pennies in the apartment to buy food because we didn’t know that we could apply for food stamps.”

“You know, there’s a lot of fear involved,” Kwan-Hui said. “...Even with the food stamps, we didn’t know if that was going to affect our citizenship application or our status. What would people think about us?”

Later, during the pandemic, her father lost his job and tried to start a new entrepreneurial business in New York, but it “didn’t pan out.” So, Kwan-Hui emphasized, “I understand from the standpoint of getting licensed, and getting the government services, the access, the education – outreach is so important.” Today, the DLCP regulates the licenses of over 58,000 businesses in the District and KwanHui is trying to improve how it’s done.

After earning a finance and business management degree from Binghamton University in New York, Kwan-Hui rose quickly in the professional world, serving as a senior accountant at Mellon Bank and as an administrator at Deutsche Bank.

But a public service career was more to her liking. In college, despite her “shyness,” Kwan-Hui took on the leadership of the Asian Student Union, inspired by seeing Asian workers’ struggles for decent working conditions.

So, around 2008, Kwan-Hui came to D.C. and found a story-book opportunity. “I didn’t know a lot of people [in D.C.], because I just relocated here… but I heard about this wonderful job fair at the Convention Center, “DC One-Stop Business Portal.” The online checklist system, now in its beta testing phase, will be the product of collaborative work across “a dozen other agencies to start to connect their systems to this new portal to speed up processes and create a better experience.”

“We aspire to make D.C #1 in the nation to launch a business where entrepreneurs can start and maintain a business seamlessly,” DLCP recently announced.

But, just having a one-stop portal is not enough. Kwan-Hui wants to ensure that every D.C. resident and business owner can navigate simply through the licensing process. “I want to make sure we do a lot of outreach to all District residents and businesses, especially those whose first language might not primarily be English and those who might use sign language,” she said, stressing that under her leadership the agency will be looking for “ways to help them navigate the licensing requirements… because the process can really be a make-or-break [experience] for a family making a living.”

It’s also important for larger businesses to be able to navigate compliance, Kwan-Hui emphasized. “Big corporations provide jobs and support for the community as well.”

“But I don’t think our role should just be limited to helping our customers with licensing and compliance. We want to make sure we connect people with our sister agencies’ efforts, maybe through grants, maybe some other opportunities, like free legal services… so they cannot only start their businesses, but sustain their businesses… For me, our role at DLCP is how we help businesses and consumers thrive.”

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Shirley Kwan-Hui, interim director of the Department of Licensing and Consumer Protection.

from Mayor Fenty, and I walked in. And when I left, I had a conditional offer to work with the Chief Technology Officer for the District,” she recalled.

Soon, Kwan-Hui had her finger on the pulse of data-driven solutions to governance in the District. She became a Program Analyst for Agency Performance managing data analysis to improve the success of city agencies. Then a TechStat Program Analyst where she led strategic planning and policy development. Then Chief of Staff for the Department of For-hire Vehicles (DFV) where she led the transition to digital cab meters “before any other capital city in the U.S.” Then she rose to deputy director of the massive DCRA.

So, when Mayor Bowser needed an interim director for the new DLCP late last year, Kwan-Hui was the obvious choice.

One of Kwan-Hui’s first orders-of-business at the new DLCP has been to streamline the business licensing process with a new

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Eric Schmidt, former CEO of Google and chairman of the former National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence; Anne Neuberger, deputy national security advisor for Cyber and Emerging Technology interviewed by David Ignatius of The Washington Post. Photos by Colin S. Johnson.

Man, Machine, and God: Ignatius Forum Examines High-Tech Threats to National Security

BY JAN SMITH

Alarm bells rang from the highest point in Washington after a recent Ignatius Forum -- Man, Machine, and God -- at the Washington National Cathedral. National security is at stake: The United States lags behind China in many areas of high-tech development.

The forum, held on November 16 in the Cathedral’s nave, examined the acceleration of Artificial Intelligence (AI) applications around the globe by competing powers, the values that should guide the accelerating high-tech competition and the needed human checks against the dangers posed.

Hosted by Cathedral Dean Randy Hollerith, David Ignatius of The Washington Post and Judge Amy Ignatius (of New Hampshire), the forum speakers included former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, Eric Schmidt, former CEO of Google and chairman of the former National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence; Anne Neuberger, deputy national security advisor for Cyber and Emerging Technology; Debo Olaosebikan, CEO of Kepler Compute, and Dr. Noreen Herzfeld, professor of Science and Religion at St. John’s University College of St. Benedict (Minnesota).

Eric Schmidt outlined the high-tech competition between the United States and China: “China today… has four times as many engineers as the United States. Their industrial model is different. They use something called civil-military fusion. So their tech companies do both military and civilian work. They have a program called Made in China 2025 where their goal is to make everything themselves… They have something called dual circulation, which means that they want to become less dependent on us and sell us more. In other words, have us be more dependent on them.”

“I can tell you that China’s ahead in communications, electronics... finance of one kind or another [and] surveillance,” Schmidt continued. We are slightly ahead in AI and slightly ahead in quantum [computing], and we are slightly ahead in biology.… And by the way, they’re ahead in new energy. So, all those nice electronic vehicles everyone’s using, they’re all basically made from parts from China and nowhere else. So, we’re very dependent on China and we’re also competing with them.”

Deputy National Security Advisor Anne Neuberger added, “When we compete with China, we’re not only competing on technology, were competing on technology combined with our values, our values that say we’re a democracy, we value civil liberties, we value privacy. And even as we seek to make use of large-scale data and the related models, we believe that can be done in a way that reflects those same values.”

Schmidt said the United States needs to be better prepared with high-tech defense tools and that the U.S. does not have a willingness problem, it has a bureaucracy problem. He added, “China has missiles that are much faster than the ones we have -- they’re called hypersonic. That’s a problem. We need to address that. So I think the way to do this