Maureen E. Brinkley, the recently installed district-level director of the Small Business Administration in St. Louis, is extremely well-prepared for her job.
“As the new district director, I am not new to the agency,” Brinkley said. In September she will have been with the agency 50 years. “So,” she said, “I’ve been around for a while. When people ask me why, I say it’s because I strongly believe in our mission.”
That job, in fact, is a fairly immense one. The St. Louis District of the SBA, which is headquartered in downtown St. Louis, serves 54 counties in Eastern Missouri. It provides counseling, loans, business information, and various specialized assistance programs for small business owners and operators within the district.
Brinkley is ready to take on those different roles. She has worked in many different capacities within the administration. She started as a clerk-stenographer, then steadily worked her way up. “I had done literally every job within the agency,” she said, “and not only in St. Louis, but also I’ve traveled the entire country working.”
In her current role, she intends to focus on the regeneration of the North Side, especially given that the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency is moving its western headquarters there. “Just imagine what can happen,” she said. “You have a building with 3,000 employees,” she said. “People will be willing to move up there. I can see houses being built, businesses being built – it’s going to take us back to walking to the corner store, you know?”
This week, she and the SBA are busy with Small Business Week, with about 20 local events to host and awards to bestow in eight categories. Michelle Sherod, the one local African-American winner this year, is the founder and CEO of ALL Solutions, Inc. and recipient of the 2017 Home-based Business Award in Eastern Missouri. She started her business in 2011 after wrapping up a successful career working for U.S. Senator Claire McCaskill.
“She is an excellent example of how to make good use of all the programs the SBA makes available to members of underserved communities,” Brinkley said of Sherod.
This fall, the SBA will observe Minority Enterprises Development Week. “We have not done as large a focus on that nationally as some district offices do, but I intend to bring that back this year,” Brinkley said. “We have so many African-American businesses, successful ones. I get so tired of turning on the news every morning, with all the bad news. I want to start focusing on the positives.”
She reminisced about some of the black-owned small businesses she has personally worked with through SBA to help achieve success.
“David Steward is one of my products,” she said. In his book “Doing Business by the Good Book,” the founder and chairman of World Wide Technology writes about sitting in his kitchen watching his roof leak and seeing his car being repossessed, then two weeks later meeting Brinkley “and everything changed,” she said.
“So I knew Dave when he was just Dave,” she said. “And he gives me way too much credit, but we did do a lot for World Wide Technology.” The company now does more than $9 billion in annual revenue and has more than 4,000 employees.
For more information on Small Business week, visit http://sbwem.org.
Sophie Hurwitz is an editorial intern for The St. Louis American from John Burroughs School.
