SENIOR FELLOW AT THE HARVARD BUSINESS SCHOOL | FORMER OBAMA CABINET MEMBER
Leading Authority on U.S. Competitiveness, Entrepreneurship & Innovation

Mills frequently provides analysis and insight on small business and the nation’s economy, including the transformation “fintech” has had on the small business lending market, as well as the catastrophic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on the small business economy. In addition to her book, Fintech, Small Business & the American Dream, she is also the author of two seminal working papers on the small business economy: The State of Small Business Lending: Innovation and Technology and Implications for Regulation (November 2016) and  The State of Small Business Lending: Credit Access in the Recovery and How Technology May Change the Game (July 2014). Additionally, with a focus on the link between entrepreneurship and middle-class opportunity, she authored portions of the U.S. Competitiveness project’s reports The Challenge of Shared Prosperity and Growth and Shared Prosperity.

Mills is President of MMP Group, which invests in businesses in financial services, consumer products and technology-enabled solutions. She serves on the Board of Directors of Skillsoft, an education technology company, and as a Director of several Churchill Capital entities. She is Chair of the Advisory Committee for the Private Capital Research Institute, a member of the Milken Institute‘s Fintech Advisory Committee and serves Vice Chair of the Board of Directors of the National Bureau of Economic Research. She is a past co-Chair of the Bipartisan Policy Center‘s Main Street Finance Task Force, and a former member of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission‘s Small Business Capital Formation Advisory Committee. She is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Harvard Corporation, the university’s highest governing board.

As SBA Administrator, Mills served on the President’s National Economic Council and as a key member of the White House economic team. At SBA, she led a team of more than 3,000 employees and managed a loan guarantee portfolio of over $100 billion. Mills is credited with turning around the agency, streamlining loan programs, decreasing processing times and reducing paperwork, which led to record-breaking years for SBA lending and investments in growth capital. Additionally, she led efforts to help small businesses create regional economic clusters, gain access to early-stage capital, boost exports, and tap into government and commercial supply chains.

Prior to the SBA, Mills held leadership positions in the private sector, including as a partner in several private equity firms, and served on the boards of Scotts Miracle-Gro and Arrow Electronics. In 2007, Maine Governor John Baldacci appointed Mills to Chair Maine’s Council on Competitiveness and the Economy, where she focused on regional development initiatives, including a regional economic cluster with Maine’s boatbuilding industry.

Mills earned an AB in economics from Harvard University and an MBA from Harvard Business School, where she was a Baker Scholar. She is a recipient of the U.S. Department of the Navy’s Distinguished Public Service Award, and is a frequent guest on news outlets, including Bloomberg radio and TV, and opinion writer, with recent placements in Fortune, Forbes, The Hill, Harvard Business Review and American Banker.