WASHINGTON—President-elect Joe Biden has decided on Isabel Guzman, a California financial enhancement official, to direct the Little Small business Administration, according to people today acquainted with the subject.

Ms. Guzman was a senior formal at the SBA throughout the Obama administration, serving as deputy main of personnel. In 2019, she turned the director of California’s Office of the Tiny Business enterprise Advocate, wherever she served employ a grant application for organizations affected by the pandemic.

If verified, Ms. Guzman would direct an company that is ideal regarded for its loan courses to present smaller firms with cash and has more a short while ago served businesses afflicted by the pandemic. Quite a few of the agency’s bank loan applications depend on partnerships with banks and other fiscal institutions, which difficulty the financial loans and receive an SBA ensure.

The agency, made in 1953, also features plans to help tiny firms gain federal contracting chances and money neighborhood centers wherever business owners obtain counseling, technical assistance and other help. By means of its Office environment of Advocacy, the SBA also aims to advance little-business passions during the federal government.

The rather small paperwork performed a critical role in the federal government’s reaction to the coronavirus pandemic. The SBA administered the well-known Paycheck Defense Program, which provided coronavirus assist in the sort of forgivable loans to compact firms, nonprofits and self-used business people.