Today's guest is Karen Mills, a professor at the TEM (The Entrepreneurial Manager) unit at Harvard Business School. Karen was the administrator of the US Small Business Administration from 2009 to 2013, serving as a member of President Obama’s Cabinet. She is also a venture capitalist and private equity partner, and the author of Fintech, Small Business, & The American Dream.    Topics: How Karen drew inspiration from her entrepreneurial family The impact of regional innovation clusters, and how she got her job at the SBA The importance of small business lending to society Karen's advice for people who want to work in the public sector How automation will affect the future of work, and which industries it will show up in Does fintech have an innovator's dilemma? Who might the eventual winners in that space be? A lesson Karen had to learn the hard way Quotes: "A meeting is not an outcome. Once you say okay, this is an outcome we want to get to, then we can say: how do we reverse-engineer success?"   "Small businesses play a critical role in the economy and in the social fabric of our lives."   "When your friend gets a great job, I say to everyone, think: good for them, irrelevant to me."