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60 The PCB Magazine • June 2016 Creation Technologies on IMPACT Washington, D.C. 2016 Meeting with congressional leadership, peers, competitors—it's all valuable, according to Bhawnesh Mathur, president and CEO of Creation Technologies. Here are his thoughts on the benefits of the event after the close of the first day of IMPACT Washington D.C. Patty Goldman: Bhawnesh, tell me about your day here at IMPACT. How was it for you? Bhawnesh Mathur: There are so many good things that come out of these annual IMPACT events. First of all, I feel like it's always impor- tant to partner with our political leaders. Their interests and our interests are the same. We want to see the economy grow. We want to find jobs. We want to move technology forward. I think when people have aligned interests, they should meet, talk and find ways of working to- gether. It's always good to do that. The specific issues that we talked about to- day will help us get better aligned. It's not an overnight thing, but for the last several years that we've been coming here we've learned to speak with each other. We've developed cred- ibility with each other. We've actually shared accomplishments with each other that we can celebrate and so on. Every time we come here I think we move the ball forward and that's a good thing. I also enjoy meeting all of my peers, and suppliers and competitors. I think it's pretty cool that we can be competi- tors in the morning and come here and work together on be- half of the industry, and that benefits everybody. Obvious- ly we're trying to win against each other on certain days, but if our industry doesn't win, we don't win. I feel a sense of urgency to do every- thing we can to help the elec- tronics and manufacturing industries grow and get some of the benefits. Goldman: How many years have you been coming to IMPACT? Mathur: I think this is my fourth or fifth year. Goldman: Do you recall what prompted you to at- tend the first time? Mathur: I do remember. I was in Denver, Colo- rado then, and I thought if I met my politicians, my senators, and my congress people, I could do more with them in Denver. I came and advo- cated on behalf of my company at that time. I told them, if you help me I can create jobs here, and I asked them if they could help my compa- ny get economic relief in this or that way. And we started a dialogue, and it actually helped. It didn't solve all of our problems of course, but it was enough to get me started. I also began to network with their connections and that helped too. So I definitely benefited from attending the first time. Goldman: So you came back the second time? Mathur: I came back, and now I manage a com- pany that's in 12 different locations around the world, with nine in the U.S. and Canada. So I find benefit. Representative Paul Ryan vis- ited our Milwaukee manufac- turing facility the week before he got named to Speaker of the House, and we told him we could use some help with an OEM that we wanted to partner with. He said, "I vis- ited your facility, I spent the whole day here and I liked it all. I'll talk to those guys." And I don't know if that played a part, but we did end up win- ning the business in the end.