Chris Pilkerton is the former Acting Administrator and General Counsel of the U.S. Small Business Administration, White House Senior Policy Advisor and Executive Director of the Opportunity Now initiative, a national economic development program to support underserved communities. He began his career as an Assistant District Attorney in Manhattan and went on to become Senior Counsel at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, a Compliance Director at JP Morgan Chase and an executive at Accion Opportunity Fund, the leading community development financial institution focused exclusively on support for small businesses. He has been a Senior Fellow at the Harvard University Kennedy School of Government, an Executive in Residence at both the Georgetown University McDonogh School of Business and the Johns Hopkins University Carey School of Business (JHU). Chris has been on the Adjunct Faculty of JHU, and the Associate Director of the Law and Public Policy Program at the Catholic University of America Columbus School of Law (CUA). He was a Fulbright Teaching Scholar at Poland's Jagiellonian University and holds an MPA from Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs, a JD from CUA, a BA from Fairfield University, and a certificate in data analytics from Cornell University’s College of Business. He has authored two books in the public policy space, with a third on the topic of pandemic small business support to be released later this year. Chris was named to Fortune’s List of the 50 Heroes of the Fortune 500.