VAULT

Four-hour wait times. Unanswered emails. The pilfering of the PPP. The SBA has had its issues. Now Isabella Casillas Guzman is on a mission to fix what ails the agency-by making it more entrepreneurial.

- Diana Ransom

Long before Isabella Casillas Guzman took over at the Small Business Administration in 2021, while the agency was still pumping roughly $1 trillion of emergency aid into the heart of the American economy, she helped out her father as he grew his veterinary hospital in East Los Angeles into a small area chain. After school and during breaks, she checked in customers and their pets at the front desk while her siblings all of whom became doctors-tended to tasks in the back of the house.

Working among the menagerie of cats, dogs, birds, and the occasional iguana, she marveled at how her father juggled the dueling responsibilities of business owner and practitioner. "That was the experience of a lifetime," Guzman told Inc. in a recent interview. Watching him "being the veterinarian all day long and then having to manage staff and growth and multiple offices that framed my interest in making sure that everybody has that opportunity to pursue their American dream."

Now Guzman, 53, wields the authority as the administrator of the SBA to push that mission into overdrive. The pandemic thrust the Eisenhower-era agency center stage in the role of savior of the world's largest economy, and Guzman is leveraging that momentum to shepherd a series of reforms designed to recast the lender of last resort into something, well, more entrepreneurial. She's especially interested in ensuring that the agency better serve Black and Brown business owners as well as those from low-income neighborhoods-people who tend to be left behind by banks. The underserved.