Karen Mills Biography

Karen Gordon Mills is a Harvard Business School Senior Fellow and a leading expert on US competitive nature, entrepreneurialism, and innovation. She served as the Administrator of the United States Small Business Administration from 2009 to 2013, and is an expert on the economic health and well-being of the nation's small businesses. Mills frequently provides analysis and insight into the small business lending market and its impact on the economy, including the rapid growth of "fintech" online lenders. She wrote the book Fintech, Small Business, and the American Dream: How Technology is Transforming Lending and Shaping a New Era of Small Business Opportunity.
Mills is the President of MMP Group, a company that invests in financial services, consumer goods, and technology-enabled solutions. She currently serves on the boards of several entrepreneurial companies, including First Aid Beauty, and is Vice Chair of Envoy, a provider of immigration services. She is the Chair of the Private Capital Research Institute's Advisory Committee, as well as the co-Chair of the Bipartisan Policy Center's Main Street Finance Task Force. a member of the Securities and Exchange Commission's Small Business Capital Formation Advisory Committee, a member of the Milken Institute's Fintech Advisory Committee, and a member of the National Bureau of Economic Research's Board of Directors She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations as well as the Harvard Corporation, the university's highest governing body.
Mills served on the President's National Economic Council and was a key member of the White House economic team as SBA Administrator. She oversaw a team of over 3,000 employees at the SBA and oversaw a loan guarantee portfolio worth more than $100 billion. Mills is credited with turning the agency around, streamlining loan programmes, reducing processing times, and reducing paperwork, which resulted in record-breaking years for SBA lending and growth capital investments. She also led efforts to assist small businesses in forming regional economic clusters, gaining access to early-stage capital, increasing exports, and gaining access to government and commercial supply chains. Mills graduated from Harvard University with a bachelor's degree in economics and a master's degree in business administration from Harvard Business School, where she was a Baker Scholar. She has received the Distinguished Public Service Award from the United States Department of the Navy and is a frequent guest on news outlets, including Bloomberg radio. and television, as well as an opinion writer, with recent appearances in Fortune, Forbes, The Hill, Harvard Business Review, and American Banker.

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