Jovita Carranza, Administrator of the U.S. Small Business Administration

In this episode of Talks at GS, Jovita Carranza, the administrator of the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA), discusses her leadership of the SBA during the coronavirus pandemic, the economic impact of the pandemic on the small business community, and federal relief for that community during the crisis.

On the importance of small businesses to the economy: “Small business is the vibrant, very nimble, very innovative sector of any nation, particularly the United States…. This particular crisis has actually elevated not only the importance of the small business investment in our economy, but also their innovation and their willingness to do more for our country.”

On advice to small businesses during this crisis: “The workforce challenges will be significant because many of these small businesses are going to possibly have to replace many of their talent. And so it’s a matter of taking the skills inventories of people that you have now and looking at ways of how to develop those skills more aggressively with the remaining workforce you have. But, in the meantime, I would say take advantage of all of the opportunities that are facing you at this time and prepare and anticipate for something like this to happen again—not as severe—God forbid, but definitely, inevitably, you have to plan for crises. It could be a family crisis. It could be a national crisis, but this I think has taught us all on what we need to do better.”
 

This episode was recorded as a call on April 9, 2020.