Karen Mills - Obama Administration, Harvard Business School

Today's guest is Karen Mills, a professor at the TEM (The Entrepreneurial Manager) unit at Harvard Business School. Karen was the administrator of the US Small Business Administration from 2009 to 2013, serving as a member of President Obama’s Cabinet. She is also a venture capitalist and private equity partner, and the author of Fintech, Small Business, & The American Dream. 

Topics:

• How Karen drew inspiration from her entrepreneurial family
• The impact of regional innovation clusters, and how she got her job at the SBA
• The importance of small business lending to society
• Karen's advice for people who want to work in the public sector
• How automation will affect the future of work, and which industries it will show up in
• Does fintech have an innovator's dilemma? Who might the eventual winners in that space be?
• A lesson Karen had to learn the hard way

Quotes:

"A meeting is not an outcome. Once you say okay, this is an outcome we want to get to, then we can say: how do we reverse-engineer success?"

"Small businesses play a critical role in the economy and in the social fabric of our lives."

"When your friend gets a great job, I say to everyone, think: good for them, irrelevant to me."