Age: 32
Gender: Female
Date of Birth: May 12, 6309
Home Planet: Praesepe Prime
Occupational History:
Currently a Council Member sitting on The Supreme Council of the Colonial Confederation.
Previously occupied various positions within Laurenz Holdings and served as CEO of some small subsidiaries; also held several positions on her father’s staff during his tenure as a Council Member.
Education:
Post graduate degrees in business and applied economics from Novak University, Earth. Undergraduate degrees in the same fields from University of Praesepe, Praesepe Prime.
Addendum:
Excerpts of an interview with Councilor Laurenz conducted by Thomas Doyle of Interstellar News Service (ISNS)
Excerpt 1
(The following is an excerpt of a post-election interview with Councilor Laurenz)
DOYLE: Councilor, thank you for taking the time to speak to us.
COUNCILOR LAURENZ: Thank you Tom, I’m glad to be here.
DOYLE: I’d like to start with an issue that received a great deal of attention while you were running, and continues to even after your election, your age. You are the youngest person ever elected to a Council seat since the founding of the Colonial Confederation, over three thousand years ago. A number of people have questioned, are you ready to sit on the Council?
COUNCILOR LAURENZ: I’ve received that question a lot, and personally, I believe that yes, I am. All of us that ran made our case to the people of Praesepe, and they thought me the best choice or I wouldn’t be here.
DOYLE: The Council Charter stipulates a minimum age of thirty for all representatives, that’s never been changed. Yet in the wake of your victory, a number of prominent individuals are calling for the Charter to be amended; your main opponent Daniel Conrad, a member of Praesepe’s Planetary Senate has by far been one of the most vocal, but he has been joined by a number of sitting Councilors as well. Will you be able to work in an environment where people have called you quote, “A spoiled child, who fails to realize the Council is not a playpen.”
COUNCILOR LAURENZ: Senator Conrad has been attacking my age since I first entered the race. It didn’t resonate then, it won’t resonate now, and I won’t let that sort of thing stop me from doing the job I was elected to do. My age was just a convenient way for them to claim I had no experience, but when people actually bothered to look at what I have really accomplished, the truth becomes clear.
DOYLE: Since you’ve brought that up, I’d like to highlight a segment from one of the debates that many analysts say turned the tide in your favor.
(The following is section is from the recording of the Second Council Election Debate of 6341.)
Senator Conrad: …no offense to Miss Laurenz personally, but at her age, she simply doesn’t have enough life experience to do the job. On top of that she has never held elected office, and now she wants to run for one of the highest positions in government. I’m sorry Miss Laurenz, but in this job experience matters, and you simply don’t have enough of it.
Sara Laurenz: I have to agree with Senator Conrad on one point, experience does matter, and looking at our records just helps highlight the differences between us. I’ve run two successful businesses, the records of which are publically available, and for over six years I’ve worked closely with my father while he sat on the Council, so I know how it operates. Ultimately it comes down to a choice for the people, do they want someone who’s experience is building successful businesses, and getting results, or someone who’s experience is a seventy year track record of failing to deliver on campaign promises?
(End of recording.)
COUNCILOR LAURENZ: [Laughs] I still enjoy watching that. But it’s true, I was eighteen, and I kept clamoring for more responsibility in our families business, I think they put me in charge just to placate me. Both of those ventures were tiny subsidiaries of Laurenz Holdings, no one expected them to go anywhere, but during my time running them the profits went up significantly and both were expanded. That’s my record, that’s my experience, I get results, and while nothing in politics moves as fast as it does in business, I plan to get results there as well. My father always said that shareholders are a lot more demanding than voters, but I intend to hold myself to the same standard for voters as I did for our company’s shareholders.
DOYLE: Speaking of your father, many were surprised by his decision not to run for another term. Before him your great uncle held the position for seventy years, your father for a mere twenty; many of us considered him a certainty for reelection. When asked about his decision, he went on the record as stating that he wanted to get back to running businesses.
COUNCILOR LAURENZ: My father has sat on the Council for most of my life, but I’ve always noticed that he was more comfortable in a board room than in the Council Chambers. I realize this might sound self-serving under the circumstances, but this was his decision, and I fully support him if it will make him happy. I can only make every effort to live up to his standard.
DOYLE: Your father repeatedly voiced his absolute confidence in your abilities, which earned him almost as much criticism as you.
COUNCILOR LAURENZ: My whole family has been completely supportive of me throughout this, and I am grateful to all of them, but particularly my father. Your right in that he was… well, ridiculed for ‘allowing’ me to run, but despite that he never once let his support waiver, he never once doubted me. His confidence really helped inspire me and helped me shrug off most of the attacks that were leveled against me.
DOYLE: Switching topics here, I want to discuss some of your policy agendas. Starting with one in particular that tends not to receive a great deal of attention, but that you managed to bring to the forefront and make a significant issue: Space Exploration.
COUNCILOR LAURENZ: Yes. I have a personal connection to this issue, and I think it is a vitally important one that often goes ignored.
DOYLE: Indeed, you are a staunch supporter of increasing our exploratory efforts, and your opinion on this issue deviated from nearly all of your opponents
COUNCILOR LAURENZ: Well, my experience with this issue comes from those business ventures that we discussed earlier. I was involved in resource exploration at the very edge of human controlled space. Not to bore people with the details, but the amount of permitting needed just to commission a survey of a system on the edge of our territory is staggering, sometimes taking years to obtain. Sending a probe into unexplored space has to be done as a joint venture with the government, and that takes even longer.
DOYLE: Many, virtually all of your opponents were quick to point out that there is a very good reason for that, The Expansion War. In an era of nearly unregulated exploration and colonization we managed to anger a comparably advanced alien civilization, and half of the human race was wiped out in the subsequent war, a war which they fought to their extinction. Even to this day, shouldn’t that give us pause?
COUNCILOR LAURENZ: First, I’d like to point out that the Expansion War was fought over three thousand years ago, and nothing even remotely close to that has happened since. In the past three millennia, we’ve encountered other advanced races and we maintain relatively cordial relations with most of them. Yet the shadow of that war hangs over us, and because of it, we’ve generally maintained policies of isolationism and xenophobia. Right now, we explore space at less than one percent the peak rate before the war.
DOYLE: But we know there are races more advanced than us out there, if we were to encounter one that turned out to be hostile…
COUNCILOR LAURENZ: Nothing is completely without risk. Alternatively, we could do nothing, and they might find us, the end result might be the same. However, I feel this is a good time to point out, we maintain a massive standing military, and we have ever since that war, so we can counter such a threat. Now, I am not proposing that we completely deregulate space exploration, but it is a topic that needs to be reevaluated. Right now, we have hundreds of thousands of military vessels in operation, ranging from small patrol ships to massive command vessels larger than most cities; and out of all of that, we have only a few dozen tiny exploratory flotillas. I think we can manage to expand our exploration efforts without compromising security. There is a great deal out there to be discovered, we owe it to ourselves to do that.
DOYLE: Moving on to more domestic policies…
(End of excerpt.)
Excerpt 2
(The following is an excerpt of a post-election interview with Councilor Laurenz)
DOYLE: Continuing on, perhaps you could tell us a little about what you do in your time off, any hobbies that you would like to talk about?
COUNCILOR LAURENZ: Well, both my sister and I are avid kite surfers.
DOYLE: Really?
COUNCILOR LAURENZ: Praesepe Prime is a beautiful planet, with countless beaches that seem to stretch on forever, so it’s a perfect hobby. I have a lot of very fond memories of that, and some that aren’t so fond.
DOYLE: Care to elaborate?
COUNCILOR LAURENZ: Most of the bad memories are of some rather rough landings, but as for the good ones… Praesepe has these massive eel like creatures, some nearly two hundred meters long, much larger than anything here on Earth. Normally they stay at depth but occasionally they come to the surface. Once while I was out on the water I saw one surface near me, utterly terrifying at the time.
DOYLE: I can imagine.
COUNCILOR LAURENZ: I adjusted my kite to get some air, and from above, I could see that there had to be at least a dozen of them circling around the area. Seeing them near the surface is rare enough, but in those numbers… I feel quite lucky to have witnessed that.
DOYLE: Remarkable, inspiring really.
COUNCILOR LAURENZ: It truly was.
DOYLE: I wanted to touch on this as well. This opinion piece from while you were running came from Eye on Praesepe, a small media outlet from your home system. Title ‘Young, Beautiful, and Phenomenally Successful… Is Sara Laurenz the Galaxy’s most Eligible Bachelorette?’ It went viral, with billions of people accessing it, any thoughts on that?
COUNCILOR LAURENZ: Flattering… maybe a little embarrassing.
DOYLE: So there is no one special in your life right now?
COUNCILOR LAURENZ: Um, not right now. I’m primarily focused on my career, and with just having been elected to the Council, it’s not something I’m concerned with at this time.
DOYLE: Any truth to the rumor that you’ve received an onslaught of date requests in the wake of that article.
COUNCILOR LAURENZ: [Sigh] No comment.
DOYLE: Well, our time is almost up, so I have only one final question. Where do you see yourself going in the future? Are you planning on a long term career in politics, or do you see yourself passing the torch in a relatively short time like your father did?
COUNCILOR LAURENZ: For the foreseeable future I plan on staying in politics, but fifty or sixty years from now, that’s hard to say. Even just ten years from now that’s predicated on my reelection. The truth is things change, I can’t say for certain what the future will hold, but barring anything unexpected, I’m not going anywhere.
DOYLE: That is all we have time for, Councilor thank you for taking the time to speak with us. We’d love to talk to you again in the future.
COUNCILOR LAURENZ: Thank you, I look forward to it.
(End of excerpt.)
