WASHINGTON—President-elect Joe Biden has picked out Isabel Guzman, a California economic progress official, to lead the Small Enterprise Administration, in accordance to persons familiar with the issue.
Ms. Guzman was a senior official at the SBA during the Obama administration, serving as deputy chief of team. In 2019, she became the director of California’s Business of the Tiny Small business Advocate, the place she aided put into action a grant method for enterprises affected by the pandemic.
If verified, Ms. Guzman would guide an agency that is greatest acknowledged for its loan systems to offer modest firms with money and has more just lately helped corporations afflicted by the pandemic. Several of the agency’s loan packages rely on partnerships with banking companies and other financial establishments, which situation the financial loans and obtain an SBA warranty.
The company, made in 1953, also gives courses to help tiny corporations win federal contracting prospects and cash neighborhood facilities the place business people get counseling, technical guidance and other aid. By means of its Place of work of Advocacy, the SBA also aims to progress little-company interests in the course of the federal federal government.
The comparatively compact paperwork played a vital function in the federal government’s reaction to the coronavirus pandemic. The SBA administered the preferred Paycheck Safety Program, which supplied coronavirus aid in the variety of forgivable financial loans to little enterprises, nonprofits and self-employed entrepreneurs.