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8 Hartford Business Journal • March 26, 2018 • www.HartfordBusiness.com SBA rebrands as small biz lending heats up Q&A talks with Wendell Davis, a Connecticut lawyer who was named in January regional administrator for the Small Business Administration Region I, which covers New England. Q. You were recently named Region I Administrator for the U.S. Small Busi- ness Administration. What's your main focus going to be in your new job? A. I want to do everything within my power to help folks start and grow businesses, create jobs and strengthen our economy. In 2017, SBA approved 5,231 loans supporting $1.5 billion in lending to New England small busi- nesses. While this is an impressive number, we need to do more in this growing national economy. We need to do a better job reaching out to underserved sectors like our minority and rural communities. We need to do a better job of identifying, supporting and assisting women and veteran- owned businesses. We can accom- plish our goals by leveraging our partnerships across the region with our resource partners like SCORE, Women's Business Centers, Small Business Devel- opment Centers and Veterans Business Outreach Center as well as state and lo- cal economic development organizations and, of course, our lending partners. Q. The SBA has played a role promot- ing the GOP tax plan. What are your thoughts in terms of its impact on small business? A. Now that the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act has passed it will take some time to fully understand its reach and impact on the economy. It was great to see companies across the nation react positively to its passage many of which were New Eng- land and Connecticut companies. There is plenty of positive news in the economy: We added 313,000 jobs in February; the number of work- ers in the U.S. labor force increased by 816,000, the largest monthly gain Wendell Davis Lawyer and Regional Administrator, Small Business Administration Region I FOCUS: Small Business By Matthew Broderick Special to the Hartford Business Journal W hen Jason Bittner, founder and CEO of Triple Helix Corp., first opened his East Hartford software and information management company in 2004, he was not only fully invested in his business dream but equally invested in getting solid business advice as a small-business entrepreneur. "I was paying a consultant between $500 and $1,000 a month to help guide and direct me because I was serious about the growth [of my business] and was trying to get the best advice I could," he said. "But as a startup, it was cost-prohibitive." Over the past 14 years, as his company has grown from a one-man operation to a team of eight, includ- ing double-digit revenue growth over the past five years, Bittner has come to rely on a new resource for busi- ness advice: the state's Small Business Development Centers (SBDC). "The amount of time my [SBDC] advisor spent with me was double or triple that of my consultant and the services were free," he said. In 2017, nearly 1,300 small businesses in Connecticut — from aspiring start- ups to established companies looking to expand — relied on the guidance from one of 25 Small Business Develop- ment Centers across the state. Funded through the U.S. Small Business Ad- ministration and the state Department of Economic and Community Develop- ment — and housed in chambers of commerce, community colleges and libraries — SBDCs provide confidential and no-cost business counseling rang- ing from business planning and financ- ing to marketing and growth strategies. The organization's biggest focus is helping businesses access capital, says Emily Carter, state director for Con- necticut's SBDCs. "Whether it's a startup venture or ex- panding business, we help businesses fig- ure out what [capital] programs they're eligible for to save the entrepreneur as Data Scientist needed to apply stat/data mining techniques to imprv rating determinations. Seek/Initiate rsrch topics/hypoth to increase innovation for products/methods utilized through data science techniques. Duties: consult w/stakeholders; desgn exprmnts to test systm ops; analyze results; write/validate algorithms to find/analyze patterns in hi-dimtnl datasets; form math models to imprv reslts; prpre/ prsnt findings/recomnd to mgmnt; specify biz reqrmnts for IT projects planned; monitor perfmnc of stat models used & make fixes/upgrds; train sub engineer/actuarial staff. 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