Margaret Woolley Busse acknowledges that her career motivation might sound a bit “pollyannish;” she has always been fascinated with how to best impact peoples’ lives for the better. Her decades of work in public policy, social impact studies, and non-profits have demonstrated that although solutions are difficult to come by, they are always worth the effort.

Governor Spencer Cox nominated Busse to become the executive director of Utah’s Department of
Commerce. Although she has worked in many levels of government, this is her first stint at state
government. She hopes her diverse experience acquired while working in Massachusetts local
government, the U.S. Department of the Treasury, various non-profits, and other organizations,
including her time at the Harvard Business School, will benefit her home state.

Busse grew up in Holladay, Utah as one of seven children. “My dad is a serial entrepreneur,” she said.
“He’s a real businessman and has also always been interested in politics and public policy.” Her
mother, Athelia Woolley, once ran for state public office.

Their dinner conversations often focus on public policy, to say the least. “Even to this day we like to talk
about what’s going on. We can be kind of intense when we all get together,” Busse adds. “My brother-
in-law likes to refer to it as a ‘vehement agreement.’”

Busse’s early life is interspersed with chance acquaintances with those now serving in elected public
office on both sides of the aisle. As a student at Olympus High School, Busse’s AP English teacher was
Carol Spackman Moss, now a Democratic state representative representing Holladay. Later, while
attending Brigham Young University, Busse served in the student body government with Utah’s
Republican Senator Mike Lee.

Deciding to study economics and public policy while at BYU was not a hard decision for Busse. “It’s
always been a top interest of mine,” she said. Microfinance and microenterprise development became
the focus of her studies. “This new idea, at the time, fascinated me. I loved that we could use market
mechanisms to help people come out of poverty.”

Microfinancing, or the concept of microcredit, was pioneered by Muhammad Yunus of Bangladesh.
Yunus discovered that very small loans had large, disproportionate effects on the poor. Although banks
considered the loans high risk, he believed if the poor were given a chance, they would repay the
money. Yunus eventually established the Grameen Bank, or “Village Bank,” that lent billions of dollars to
millions of poor Bangladeshis to prove his theory. He was later awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his
work.

“I got really interested in this concept,” Busse said. “And I ended up doing my master’s thesis on it while
at BYU.” Busse worked with the Ouelessebougou Alliance based in Utah to help organize and implement
a “village bank” in Mali, Africa.

This work earned her first job as a financial economist and presidential management fellow
at the U.S. Department of the Treasury. Soon after, then-President Bill Clinton established the
Community Development Financial Institutions Fund within the agency to utilize principles of
microfinancing to help low-income Americans. Busse helped identify non-profit and for-profit financial
institutions to receive CDFI grants and loans. These funds would, in turn, be lent to individuals and
families who would not otherwise have access to capital.

“While working there I met people who were running these programs in underserved areas all around
the country,” Busse said. “A lot of those folks had great hearts but no financial or business experience.”
So, she decided to go back to school and get her MBA.

Busse’s intention was not to join the corporate world. She wanted to study at a program that would
equip her with the skills to make a difference in helping the indigent. “I went to Harvard Business
School, in part, because they had a program called the Social Enterprise Initiative,” she said. “They were
one of the first business schools to have one of these initiatives; a program that all the major business
schools have now.”

Harvard’s Social Enterprise Initiative centered on training students to take tried-and-true business
principles and apply them to making social impact, whether that be through a non-profit, a for-profit, or
in public policy. “I went there because I knew they had the experience and resources, and I loved it,”
Busse said.

Subsequently, Busse started a job with The Bridgespan Group, a consultancy firm that spun off of Bain &
Company. “They had the same idea to take the principles and tools of for-profit management
consultancy and apply them to the non-profit sector,” Busse said. For the next couple of years, she
worked extensively with clients to enable them to achieve community impact more efficiently and
effectively.

While living in the greater Boston area, she met her husband and started a family. For a time, she stayed
at home to raise the children while they were young. The family settled in Acton, Massachusetts near
Concord, the same revolutionary-war-famous Lexington and Concord.

“I loved living there with my kids and having history all around us,” Busse said. This love of community
and the people soon obliged her to get involved in local government. She served on the Acton Planning
Board for a number of years before becoming chairwoman of an Acton committee tasked with creating
a master development plan. Busse then served on the Acton Finance Committee and eventually as its
chairwoman, bringing her total service in local government to nearly eight years.

“I feel like I really cut my public policy and political teeth in that environment,” Busse said. “I just love
local government because that is where the rubber meets the road.” Although she is a lifelong
Republican, everyone she worked with was a Democrat, and she adds, “frankly all my friends were
Democrats too, because that’s Massachusetts.”

Differences of political persuasion did not hinder her working together with others for the good of the
township. “Local politics can often transcend partisan politics because people have a vested interest in
the town where they live,” she said.

Busse eventually went back to work as an associate director of the Social Enterprise Initiative at Harvard
where she had studied years earlier. “It allowed me to gain a bird’s eye view of awesome things people
were doing in social impact and in the public sector worlds.”

But the 2016 election and what she describes as “increased polarization around the country” disturbed
her. Around the same time, Busse read about a survey that detailed not only that Americans’ trust levels
in the federal government were low, but also their trust levels in each other.

“I was kind of gobsmacked by that,” Busse said. “I had worked with Democrats, all Democrats, in the
town government and loved it. Yeah, we might have had different views, but we also had common
ground – we wanted to make our town better.”

Busse decided to run for state Senate to convey that message. “My number one reason for running was
to message to people how to work together around common ground.”

True to her signature style, she campaigned hard. Busse personally knocked about six thousand doors
and put on numerous events to get her message out, and it seemed to be resonating. She successfully
raised money, becoming one of the top fundraisers in the state. And the local news named Busse as one
of six women to watch in Massachusetts politics.

When she announced her candidacy as a Republican many in her community and at her work at Harvard
were surprised. “No one was mean or rude about it, but they just couldn’t understand,” Busse said.
Preconceived notions and a misunderstanding of what it means to be a Republican rarely prompted
them to think about it for themselves. That is until they gave Busse a chance to explain.

One close coworker who had organized an impact investing fund in India, approached Busse one day
and said, “I have to ask, very respectively, why are you a Republican?”

Busse explained that she wanted the same things: “thriving communities, less inequality, and to ensure
people are able to have earned success to make a good life for themselves.” She continued that the
common ground they had were these shared end goals. “Let’s agree that we have the same goal, and
that we might just have different methodologies on how to reach it,” she said.

This explanation appeared to be compelling, even for this coworker who Busse learned later had worked
as a Democratic operative. “For me, it is all about empowering people,” she said. “The dignity of work
and the dignity of the individual are important.”


Unfortunately, her campaign fell short of the votes needed against the long-time incumbent. She
attributes some of the reason for her loss to the “blue wave that took the country in 2018.” Although
she was disappointed, she enjoyed the “retail opportunity” of talking to people and learning from them.
Her 23 years living on the East coast helped refine her ideas and interact with people of various political
persuasions and backgrounds.

MOVING BACK TO UTAH

The Busse’s decided to move back to Margaret’s hometown of Holladay, Utah in late 2019. The decision
was predicated on employment flexibility of her husband “who works from home as a rocket scientist.”
And mostly on the desire to be closer to her parents in their sunset years.

Returning to her hometown and seeing her children attend the same high school see did is exciting for
Busse. She’s also been impressed in how the state has grown and matured over the last two decades.

Utah had caught her eye from a distance while working in social impact on the East coast. “I started
seeing interesting data come out of Utah,” Busse said. A Harvard scholar conducted a nationwide social
economic analysis at the zip code level and many neighborhoods in Utah showed up on top. “There’s
this amazing job growth here year upon year and the highest growth in the country,” Busse said.

She noticed a much more “collaborative” spirit among Utahns upon return to the state. “There’s this
optimistic can-do attitude. This is very different from what I experienced in Massachusetts where things
are much more entrenched.”

Busse did not have a job lined up upon returning to Utah. A series of information interviews introduced her
to many in the state, including then-gubernatorial candidate Spencer Cox. “We talked about how Utah
can be a leader and set an example of effective conservative leadership. And I was really inspired by
that,” she said.

Busse worked on the Cox campaign as a policy advisor and after the election was asked to join the
transition team. She collaborated with a committee chaired by Crystal Maggelet, who is president of FJ
Management, on economic policy recommendations which later was published as the “economic
advancement” section of Governor Cox’s One Utah Roadmap for his administration’s first 500 days in
office.

Busse was not expecting Cox to ask her to join his cabinet and nominate her to lead the Department of
Commerce. “I was thrilled to receive that call and join his administration,” Busse said. “I think he is an
incredibly visionary leader and focused on the same exact unity message I was trying to preach during
my campaign.” She adds that Utah might have its problems, but the state’s potential to show the rest of
the nation how to be unified and get things done through our conservative model is an opportunity
she’s happy to work on.

WHAT DOES THE DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE DO?

Utah’s Department of Commerce is not necessarily a household name nor is it’s service widely known,
but it has an important role to play. “I like to say we facilitate trust in commercial activity,” Busse said.
“We are a regulator mostly, but through that regulation we facilitate the trust necessary for commercial
activity to thrive.”

Commerce runs state licenses for businesses and safeguards Utah consumers from fraud in the market.
Busse points out that some libertarian opinions view all regulation as bad, that it unnecessarily hinders
business development in the market, but she disagrees. “I think that is incorrect because if you have no
regulation then bad actors will commit business fraud. They will screw people and others will not want
to participate in the market,” Busse said. “No one will want to invest and grow business if their neighbor
just got screwed in a Ponzi scheme.”

REASONABLE, RELIABLE, AND RELEVENT REGULATION

Busse’s vision for Commerce is to bolster its legacy as a regulator that protects but doesn’t become
overbearing. “For good economic success you need to have a reasonable and reliable regulatory
environment,” she said. “And I am going to add a third ‘R,’ which is a relevant regulatory environment.”
Although she has only been on the job a few months, Busse is working to ensure that Utah’s regulations
are relevant, and up to date to handle innovation and the needs of our workforce in an ever-changing economy.

As part of the goals for the first 500 days of the Cox administration, Busse and her team are completing
a full regulatory review. Governor Cox’s first executive order pertained to identifying barriers to work
through professional and occupational licensing. Busse is the main principle in the administration’s review. Commerce publishes a daily update of the active licensing count of over 200 professions the department regulates.

These herculean tasks shepherded by Busse and her team will give state legislators and the governor a
clear understanding of how regulations affect Utah workers and businesses. Utah was one of only two
states that grew jobs during 2020. “We have one of the most diverse economies, in terms of the
different sectors that we have,” Busse said, referencing reasons why Utah weathered the pandemic so
well and why it keeps growing. She is working with Cox on implementing mechanisms to ensure ongoing
regulatory reform to further remove barriers to start-ups and workers.

THE FUTURE OF EDUCATION MUST FOLLOW THE FUTURE OF WORK

Last month, Busse tweeted an article by American Enterprise Institute’s Oren Cass and the transition
American education is going through. She stated on the post that, “the future of education must be tied
to the future of work.”

Busse echoes the viewpoints voiced by Cox in his state of state address, where he said, “we must
overcome once and for all this terrible idea that every child needs a bachelor’s degree to be successful.”

Busse opines that the four-year college system is a blunt instrument in training people and has turned
out to be costly. “Not everyone can afford it, and it’s not necessarily training people for what is needed
in the workplace,” she said, noting that some majors have become “very ivory tower-ish.”

In place of traditional college, micro-credentialling and investment in short term programs to acquire
skills will become more popular. “I think there is going to be a tsunami of these kinds of things in the
future,” Busse said.

Commerce regulates these post proprietary secondary schools and Busse wants to ensure that all of
them will equip students with the skills they advertise. By doing so, more Utahns will acquire the skills
needed to empower themselves through the dignity of work and earned success.

“We have to build a workforce that is agile enough to take on the kinds of changes that are coming,”
Busse said. The pandemic has acted as a “forcing mechanism” for people to reevaluate whether college
is worth the money and if there are not alternative paths to pursue into productive careers.

Micro-credentialing and micro-licensing reforms on the part of Utah’s Department of Commerce will
affect the scope of work available and make more professions accessible to all parts of the state’s
workforce. “As an example, instead of going through the training to be a full cosmetologist, we’ve broken up
the scope of practice so some can get a license to just do nails,” Busse said. Some of these concepts are
already working well.

VISION FOR THE FUTURE

Busse wants Commerce to focus, writ large, on organizing around coordination, educating, and
innovating.

“We have a very large economic footprint as an agency,” she said. “We have a lot of data and I don’t
think it’s been collected and shared in a collaborative manner before with others.” She is working with
other state agencies, including Dan Hemmert in the newly-named Governor’s Office of Economic Opportunity to share agency data so it can better tell Utah’s story of success. The data could also become a leading indicator to warn if regulation is overburdening certain sections of the economy.

Proactively educating Utahns on potential consumer harm is a priority. “We want to educate but not
frighten them,” Busse said.

Lastly, Busse is enthusiastic about agency innovation and the creation of mechanisms to ensure proper
regulation of business.

“Utah is amazing,” Busse said, “and has so much potential.”