Aida Alvarez

Administrator, U.S. Small Business Administration

Aida Alvarez is administrator of the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) and a member of the President's Cabinet.

Alvarez, 47, is a former government financial regulator, investment banker and journalist. She is the first Hispanic woman and the first person of Puerto Rican heritage to hold a position in the President's Cabinet.

As SBA Administrator, Alvarez directs the delivery of a comprehensive set of financial and business development programs for U.S. small businesses. The agency provides financing worth about $11 billion a year to small businesses across the nation.

Alvarez comes to the SBA after leading the government's first effort to regulate the nation's two largest housing finance companies, the Federal National Mortgage Association (Fannie Mae) and the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation (Freddie Mac). As Director of the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight (OFHEO), she created a financial safety and soundness oversight program for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. These two firms are government-chartered corporations whose operations form the core of the trillion-dollar secondary mortgage market.

Before her OFHEO appointment in June 1993, Alvarez was an investment banker at the First Boston Corporation and at Bear Stearns. Her public service background includes two years as vice president at the NYC Health & Hospitals Corporation. She also served as a commissioner on the New York City Charter Revision Commission, a member of the Governor's State Judicial Screening Committee, and a member of the Mayor's Committee on Appointments.

During her career as a journalist, Alvarez won a Front Page award while at the New York Post. She also was an award winning television news reporter and anchor for Metromedia television (Channel Five) in New York. In 1982, she won an Associated Press Award for Excellence and an Emmy nomination for her reporting of guerrilla activities in El Salvador.

Her past board memberships include the National Hispanic Leadership Agenda, the New York Community Trust and the National Civic League. She is a former board chairman of the Municipal Assistance Corporation/Victim Services Agency, New York.

Alvarez is a native of Aguadilla, Puerto Rico. She is a cum laude graduate of Harvard College. In 1985, she was awarded an honorary Doctor of Laws from Iona College.

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Last Modified: 2-27-97