Cabinet Secretary Maria Contreras-Sweet Visits the School of Management

Photo: Maria Contreras-Sweet and D. Bernard Webster, pictured center, with members of her team and the Small Business Administration district office.

While in New York City for President Barack Obama’s speech at the United Nations in September, Cabinet Secretary Maria Contreras-Sweet, administrator for the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA), visited the School of Management Center for Entrepreneurial Studies.

The visit was coordinated in partnership with Vanguarde Consulting Group, a venture-in-residence firm at the School of Management’s small business incubator at the Manhattan campus. It helps support activities at the Center for Entrepreneurial Studies by mentoring students, offering internships, and working with faculty members. Vanguarde’s work on issues of diversity and inclusion in emerging tech sectors has been recognized by the SBA in 2015 as a Regional Growth Accelerator for its support of the economic development and startup activities across the United States.

Contreras-Sweet met with the center’s director D. Bernard Webster, as well as NYIT faculty and staff members to learn about the School of Management and the accelerator program. She and her team visited with students and alumni, toured the School of Management’s simulated trading floor, and were given a demonstration of the accelerator program’s work with Microsoft HoloLens, a self-contained holographic computer.