ATLANTA – TechAmerica is concerned about venture, angel and seed capital drying up, especially in the Southeast. So says Maryann Fiala, the association’s regional director for Mid-America and the Southeast. “You can’t grow a company without capital, so the association is looking at ways states can encourage seed capital for startups.”
TechAmerica, the 1,500 member trade association formed from the merger of AeA (formerly known as the America Electronics Association), the Cyber Security Industry Alliance (CSIA), the Government Electronics & Information Technology Association (GEIA), and the Information Technology Association of America (ITAA) in 2009, will hold a series of roundtables to determine its policy agenda in coming months, Fiala says.
Members are companies who have a total of about 16,000 U.S. offices.
Fiala tells TechJournal South the organization will determine the location for the roundtables at a later date and will meet to discuss them Sept. 12.
TechAmerica is the industry’s largest advocacy organization and is dedicated to helping members’ top and bottom lines. It is also the technology industry’s only grassroots-to-global advocacy network, with offices and partnerships in state capitals across the country, Washington DC, Europe (Brussels) and Asia (Beijing) and around the world.
She says TechAmerica is most concerned about ensuring that its members can operate competitively and will look at tax and government policies on the state and local level to evaluate if they unfairly target technology or Internet firms over brick and mortar establishments.
That means, for instance, “Don’t put privacy regulations on the Internet where the same regulations can’t be enforced for non-net transactions. “Fairness is always a prominent consideration,” she says.
“We’re also concerned about education,” she adds. “We want to make sure companies have a workforce prepared for the 21st century.” That means science, math, and engineering skills, she notes. “We want to make sure we have classrooms that prepare children to think critically and who can work in a team environment where other members of the team may be half a country away from them.”
On issues the association sees as important, she says, include regulations around the environment that make it difficult for a company to market its products. “We want to make sure any environmental regulations put foward are those that don’t unnecessarily impede the ability of a company to sell its product and that they are uniformly applied.”
Fiala was with one of TechAmerica’s predecesors, the AeA, since 2000.
After graduating from Youngstown State University in Ohio with a degree in business administration, she spent nine years in Florida in sales and sales management in the telecommunications industry with Sprint and Siemens.
From there she became the Southeast Regional Director for a high tech staffing firm, where she worked for over 6 years. Maryann served as the Executive Director for the Greater Orange City Area Chamber of Commerce and the Oviedo Chamber of Commerce before coming to AeA, now TechAmerica.
Online: www.techamerica.org
Southeast Venture Conference, February 29 – March 1, 2012 at the Ritz Carlton in Tysons Corner, VA – Where Smart Money Meets Smart People.
www.seventure.org
© 2009, TechJournal South. All rights reserved.
