By Michelle Tirado
June 3, 2009

In mid-May, the U.S. Small Business Administration welcomed Clara Pratte as the national director of its Office of Native American Affairs.

Pratte, 30 and a member of the Navajo Nation, came to the post with a degree from the University of Arizona and several years of business and economic development experience, both in the tribal and federal government sectors, and she plans on putting it all to good use.

During her third week on the job, we spoke to Pratte about her agenda, what she hopes to accomplish in the coming months and years to enhance the office, which is staffed by three, and assist Native American entrepreneurs and businesses.

AIR: What in your career best prepared you for this role?

Pratte: I think there are a couple of things in my career that prepared me for this role. I would say the first thing was doing small business exporter counseling with the Department of Commerce Trade Information Center. In that capacity, we had so many different businesses with a variety of experience coming to us for help with export counseling, … So, sort of walking them through the steps of what they needed to do just to start their own business. And most of these folks were [from] rural America. …

My father was a small business owner not far from the reservation and he had always talked about possibly opening businesses up on the reservation. But from a young age, I can remember there being some impediments to opening up a business, whether it was from the tribal side or the federal side or the BIA [Bureau of Indian Affairs] side — just a myriad of jurisdictional issues. …

But then working directly for my tribe was probably the most helpful. I worked for the Navajo Nation Washington Office here in D.C. for the last couple of years doing economic development and really looking at it from the tribal perspective on: What were the Navajo Nation’s internal processes that were impeding entrepreneurship? And what were the external stopgap measures that were available and how could we utilize them — from the federal government as well as local and state?

AIR: What was one of the first things tackled or accomplished when you came on board?

Pratte: Well, it is week three, and one of the big things I am trying to do right now — and it is done, we just need to get clearance and get it taken care of — is our Web presence. Right now, our online Web presence for the Office of Native American Affairs is pretty static. [The Web site] does not have a whole lot of information on it. … I am working … on getting that to be a little bit more fleshed out; more programmatic features; letting people know exactly why this office exists, what we do here and how we can assist entrepreneurship in Native America.

AIR: What is on your agenda over the next few months?

Pratte: We have a couple of programs that were started by my predecessor, Mr. Bill Largent. One of them is the Tribal Self-Assessment Tool that was due to be completed by the end of September. One of my big goals is getting that completed, out the door, ready for tribes to utilize. …

Another thing I am looking at is really identifying the target market that SBA has hit in Indian Country. I think we have had some successes out there with getting the word out on what SBA can do. But there are certainly pockets of the population that we have not reached, either through marketing or through outreach — we just have not been able to reach them. So, really looking at those populations that have no idea what SBA does, who we are, what this office can do, the lending programs that we have, the Surety Bond Guarantee Program. Now, we have this ARC [America’s Recovery Capital] loan under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act that people can take advantage of. …

AIR: Over the long term, what will be your priorities?

Pratte: As Administrator Mills is putting out her objectives, we certainly want to keep in line with those to make sure that we are all moving in the same direction. Some of the things that we have been talking about are things like telemedicine, the business implications for telemedicine, and health IT records. …

Another long-term goal is accessing the 8(a) program. That is something that has come up time and time again from the consultations that have been held in the past as well as [from] some interest groups that I have spoken to in the last couple of weeks … that the application process has been hard to navigate. So, long-term goal: I really want to make sure that we make that as approachable and user-friendly as possible for the Native community.