Karen Gordon Mills
Karen G. Mills is the 23rd Administrator of Small Business Administration (SBA) in Washington, DC. Her nomination by President Barak Obama was confirmed by the U.S. Senate by unanimous consent on April 3, 2009. Since 1983 she has been an active leader in managing and growing small businesses and in public policy around innovation and job creation.
As President of MMP Group, Ms. Mills invested in and took a leadership role in the growth of companies in the consumer products, food, distribution, textile, and industrial component sectors. Ms. Mills was a co-founder and managing director of Solera Capital which raised $250 million in its 2000 fund, and Chief Operating Officer of E.S. Jacobs and Company, a private equity firm where she had operating control of businesses with sales of almost $600 million, 4,100 employees and 32 plants.
In 2007 Ms. Mills was appointed by the Governor of Maine to Chair the Council on Competitiveness and the Economy. In 2006 she led the initiative for a $50 million competitive research and development bond that passed the Maine legislature with strong bipartisan support, and was approved by public referendum. She has also participated in the Governor’s Council for the Redevelopment of the Brunswick Naval Air Station, and served on the board of the Maine Technology Institute and the Maine chapter of the Nature Conservancy.
For several years Ms. Mills has been national voice in the U.S. competitiveness discussion and is the author of a Brookings paper on the federal role in regional economic development clusters. She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and has been Vice Chairman of the Harvard Overseers. Other Harvard activities have included the visiting committees to Engineering, Chemistry, Information Technology, and the Harvard Business School.
Ms. Mills has an A.B. in economics from Harvard University, and an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School where she was a Baker Scholar. Her background includes consulting in the U.S. and Europe for McKinsey and Co. and product management for General Foods. Ms. Mills has been the lead director of Scotts Miracle-Gro and a director of Arrow Electronics, a $15 billion semiconductor distributor.
Ms. Mills has three boys and her husband, Barry, is the President of Bowdoin College.