Obama’s SBA Pick Pleases Some, But Not All, Agency Critics

Kelly Spors reports on small business. President-elect Barack Obama ’s appointment of Maine venture capitalist Karen Gordon Mills as the next Small Business Administration chief is likely to please SBA critics who have been hoping the agency’s new leader would have a broad understanding of finance to help clean up the agency’s major lending programs. Mills is founding partner of Solera Capital, a New York private equity firm, and current chairwoman of the Maine Governor’s Council on Competitiveness. She also founded Maine private equity firm MMP Group in 1993. She has a degree in economics from Harvard Radcliffe, and an M.B.A. from Harvard. She has been a director at a number of companies, large and small, including Latina Media Ventures LLC, Annie’s Homegrown and Scotts Miracle Gro. Her husband, Barry Mills , is president of Bowdoin College. Several women’s business groups had promoted the idea that the next SBA administrator should be a woman ... (link)