Tami Perriello

Tami L. Perriello is an American government official who serves as the Chief Financial Officer (CFO) of the U.S. Small Business Administration, the senior executive responsible for the agency's budget, accounting, financial systems, and financial reporting. The SBA is a cabinet-level-adjacent federal agency that supports small businesses through loan guarantees, disaster lending, contracting programs, and the Small Business Investment Company (SBIC) framework.

Perriello was named Acting Administrator of the SBA, leading the entire agency from January 20, 2021 to March 17, 2021, during the presidential transition. She held the post between Senate-confirmed Administrators Jovita Carranza and Isabel Guzman, a period that included administration of major COVID-19 relief programs such as the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP). She returned to her CFO role after Guzman's confirmation.

Before the SBA, Perriello served in financial-leadership roles across the federal government, including as Associate Administrator and Chief Financial Officer of the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) within the U.S. Department of Transportation, and as a director of the Office of Financial Systems. Earlier in her career she worked for the U.S. House of Representatives (reported as a chief information officer role) and as a managing director at an accounting and consulting firm, giving her a mix of public-sector financial management and private professional-services experience.

Perriello holds a B.S. in accounting from the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) and an M.S. in finance from Johns Hopkins University.

• Not applicable in a personal-investor sense. Perriello does not make personal angel or seed investments; no individual investment thesis, stated criteria, or check size has been published.
• In her institutional capacity as SBA CFO, the relevant "focus" is stewardship of the agency's finances and oversight of SBA capital-access programs that themselves support small businesses and early-stage companies — e.g., 7(a) and 504 loan guarantees, disaster loans, and the Small Business Investment Company (SBIC) program, through which licensed funds (not Perriello personally) provide debt and equity to small businesses.
• Founders seeking *capital* should look to SBA *programs* (SBIC-licensed funds, SBA-backed lenders) rather than to Ms. Perriello as an individual backer.