Karen Mills

Karen Gordon Mills is a Senior Fellow at the Harvard Business School and a leading authority on U.S. competitiveness, entrepreneurship and innovation. She was a member of President Barack Obama’s Cabinet, serving as the Administrator of the U.S. 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 on the small business lending market and its impact on the nation’s economy, including on the rapid growth of “fintech” online lenders. She is the author of the book Fintech, Small Business & the American Dream: How Technology is Transforming Lending and Shaping a New Era of Small Business Opportunity.

Mills is President of MMP Group, which invests in businesses in financial services, consumer products and technology-enabled solutions. She currently serves as a director of several entrepreneurial companies, including First Aid Beauty, and is Vice Chair of Envoy, an immigration services provider. She is Chair of the Advisory Committee for the Private Capital Research Institute, co-Chair of the Bipartisan Policy Center‘s Main Street Finance Task Force, a member of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission‘s Small Business Capital Formation Advisory Committee, a member of the Milken Institute‘s Fintech Advisory Committee and serves on the Board of Directors of the National Bureau of Economic Research. She is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Harvard Corporation, the university’s highest governing board.

As SBA Administrator, Mills served on the President’s National Economic Council and as a key member of the White House economic team. At SBA, she led a team of more than 3,000 employees and managed a loan guarantee portfolio of over $100 billion. Mills is credited with turning around the agency, streamlining loan programs, decreasing processing times and reducing paperwork, which led to record-breaking years for SBA lending and investments in growth capital. Additionally, she led efforts to help small businesses create regional economic clusters, gain access to early-stage capital, boost exports, and tap into government and commercial supply chains.

Mills earned an AB in economics from Harvard University and an MBA from Harvard Business School, where she was a Baker Scholar. She is a recipient of the U.S. Department of the Navy’s Distinguished Public Service Award, and is a frequent guest on news outlets, including Bloomberg radio and TV, and opinion writer, with recent placements in Fortune, Forbes, The Hill, Harvard Business Review and American Banker.