Chris Pilkerton is a former Cabinet member and head of the U.S. Small Business Administration, serving as both the agency’s acting administrator and general counsel. In these roles, he advocated for America’s millions of small businesses, advanced manufacturing ecosystems, and associated workforce development initiatives for urban and rural areas. He also served as a White House senior policy advisor and the executive director of the White House Opportunity Now initiative, a government-wide program to support economic empowerment for disadvantaged communities working directly with mayors and governors on local economic initiatives. Pilkerton has worked as chief legal and regulatory strategy officer for the nation’s largest nonprofit community development financial institution concentrating on small business support for the underserved, as well as a compliance director at JPMorgan Chase, where he was named one of the “Heroes of the Fortune 500” by Fortune magazine for his humanitarian efforts in Liberia. He began his legal career as an assistant district attorney in Manhattan and went on to become senior counsel at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. He has been an executive-in-residence at Johns Hopkins University Carey Business School and Georgetown University McDonough School of Business, the associate director of the Law and Public Policy Program at The Catholic University of America Columbus School of Law (CUA) and a Fulbright Teaching Scholar in Poland. He holds a master’s in public administration from Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs, a JD from CUA, a BA from Fairfield University, and a certificate in data analytics from Cornell University College of Business.