Good morning, Chairwoman Velazquez, Ranking Member Luetkemeyer, and distinguished Members of the Committee. Thank you for the invitation, and I am energized to discuss SBA’s Office of Entrepreneurial Development. Our mission is to help small businesses start, grow, and compete in global markets by providing quality training, counseling, and access to resources. OED is SBA’s technical assistance arm.
Throughout my career, nothing has been more purposeful than truly empathizing with and supporting small business owners. I am a product of entrepreneurship.
Like many of our U.S. small business owners, my dad was unrelenting in changing the course of our family’s destiny as he built a welding business in the Texas panhandle. We are proud of my dad for his evolution from the cotton fields to being his own boss. Mi Papa, my dad, died of COVID-19 and we almost lost my mom. We are thankful to God that my mom survived. So I consider supporting small businesses like my dad’s the honor of a lifetime and I have a proven track record of doing so.
At OED, we oversee SBA’s network of resources partners, including Small Business Development Centers, Women’s Business Centers, and SCORE. Additionally, our Office of Entrepreneurship Education (OEE) spearheads our Electronic Learning Initiative and the Community Navigator Pilot. Over the last 9 months, we have made great strides in fighting the pandemic and recovering our economy, achieving historic job growth for a new administration.
However, we still have a long way to go, which is why President Biden announced the COVID-19 Action Plan, a comprehensive national strategy to fight COVID-19 and to protect our economic recovery. At the SBA, we are honored to support these efforts, making critical improvements to the COVID Economic Injury Disaster Loan, streamlining forgiveness of small Paycheck Protection Program funding of $150,000 or below, and launching the Community Navigator Pilot.
Enacted by the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021, Navigator’s goal is to strengthen outreach to our nation’s smallest businesses, both in rural and urban America, particularly those owned by women, veterans, and socially or economically disadvantaged individuals. This program will advance our reach of SBA services and access to federal, state, and local resources by leveraging a national network of hyper- local community navigators who, in the words of Administrator Guzman, are “on the ground truly connecting, empathizing, and tailoring solutions for our small businesses.”
The Community Navigator Pilot is a $100 million competitive grant funding opportunity. Alongside our Office of General Counsel, our office is currently reviewing proposals and we look forward to announcing the grant recipients this month.
Our combined efforts are more critical now given the urgent state of recovery of our U.S. small businesses. Thus, in addition, Navigator’s OED is laser focused on supporting our Resource Partners.
Supported by our Office of Small Business Development Centers, we are proud of our network of SBDCs for their tireless work throughout the pandemic, including utilization of CARES Act funding to increase support of our small businesses over this past year and a half. Between April and December 2020, SBDCs were able to use CARES Act funding to support 592,000 small businesses.
Supported by our Office of Women’s Business Ownership (OWBO), our 138 Women’s Business Centers support female entrepreneurs through training, technical assistance, and providing access to capital, credit, and federal contracting opportunities. These hyper-local centers are more important than ever as women business owners have been disproportionately impacted by the pandemic. We are proud that OWBO has launched 24 new WBCs this year, including two in Puerto Rico and Tulsa. Supported by our Office of Entrepreneurship Education and SCORE, our nation’s largest network of volunteer business mentors, with over 250 local chapters and over 10,000 mentors nationwide, provide personalized mentorship to entrepreneurs across all 50 states and Puerto Rico. During the pandemic, the application of mentorship became increasingly critical and SCORE made it accessible through the creation of an online resilience HUB.
I close by stating OED priority to execute strong controls to ensure our programs have robust management and oversight. To underscore this commitment, we have introduced a next generation reporting system to monitor performance and accountability. This is a very difficult time for America’s small businesses, and yet, they continue to embody that grit and resilience and hope. And we look forward, alongside your efforts, to support them every step of the way.
Thank you for this invitation. I am honored to be here and I look forward to your questions. Thank you.