Biden nominates Pakistani as dy admin Small Business Administration

WASHINGTON: The US President, Joe Biden, has announced to nominate Dilawar Syed to serve as Deputy Administrator of the Small Business Administration (SBA). Syed is a Pakistani who immigrated to the United States back as a student.

Dilawar Syed is the President and CEO at Lumiata, an AI for healthcare company focused on reducing healthcare costs and improving patient outcomes. Previously, Syed was President at Freshworks where he helped scale the software company’s products to thousands of small and medium businesses. Syed has driven civic efforts at the federal, state, and local level focusing on economic growth and entrepreneurship. As the founding Chair of California Entrepreneurship Task Force with the Governor’s Office of Business and Economic Development, Dilawar drives inclusive entrepreneurship bridging coastal regions with the state’s rural heartland.

Syed holds an M.B.A. from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and earned a B.A. in Economics and Computer Science from the University of Texas at Austin. He immigrated to the United States from Pakistan as a freshman student to attend The College of Wooster in Ohio.

Earlier, the Pakistani immigrant had served on President Obama’s White House Commission on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders (AAPIs) and chaired the White House Initiative on AAPIs’ Economic Growth Committee. In that role, Syed led the administration’s engagement with small businesses across the U.S. after the passage of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. He also served as a liaison with the Small Business Administration and the Department of Commerce on federal initiatives such as the President’s Export Council.