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Best Small-Business Practices
AmCham
Egypt and the Successful Career Women
Committee hosted Aida Alvarez, U.S. Small
Business Administration (SBA) administrator,
in the Aida Ballroom at the Cairo Marriott
Hotel.
A strong
advocate of privatization, she is optimistic
about small-business opportunities in Egypt.
The new partnership between the Egyptian
government and the private sector will
facilitate the shift from direct U.S. aid to
that of investment and trade. The
partnership is expected to create over
500,000 new private sector jobs. The SBA
capacity program stresses that they are not
in Egypt to replace USAID, but to
"connect small businesses to financing,
lending and education."
Alvarez is
a graduate of Harvard College, and holds
honorary Doctor of Law degrees from Iona
College, Bethany College, and the
Inter-American University in Puerto Rico.
She was nominated to be the first director
of the office of Federal Housing Enterprise
Oversight, and she established regulatory
oversight of two housing finance companies,
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which form the
core of the trillion-dollar secondary
mortgage market.
Alvarez
received an Emmy nomination for her coverage
of "The Morazan Diary," the
guerrilla activities during the war in El
Salvador. She is the first Hispanic woman
and the first Puerto Rican in any president’s
cabinet.
U.S. Vice President Al Gore sent a letter in support of Alvarez’s
initiative.
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