Richard M. Daley has been mayor of Chicago for 17 years.  He’s won his last four elections by “overwhelming margins” and has worked to rethink and redesign many of the cities’ issues, from education and crime to improving transportation and parks.

And he’s recently visited Asia, twice.  In 2004 he toured around China (specifically Shenyang and Shanghai) and Japan, hoping to improve business connections and learning about mass transit solutions.  He’s also working to turn his city towards Asia by implementing Chinese language courses in schools.  This time he’s in Beijing, hoping to cement further business relations for Chicago.  And guess who he ate breakfast with yesterday morning?  Our very own Edward Lehman.

Mr. Lehman is a born-and-bred son of Chicago and he was very proud to sit and chat with Richard Daley about encouraging Chinese investors to look towards Chicago.  They also spoke about some of the fears that American workers have of losing jobs to China.  Mr. Lehman spoke about encouraging Americans not to worry, but to do what they/we do best instead: branding, distribution, marketing, innovation, etc.