FALMOUTH — A local woman has been selected to be the next regional administrator of the U.S. Small Business Administration.

Jeanne Anderson Hulit will oversee the SBA’s programs and services in Maine, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Vermont and New Hampshire.

“The Small Business Administration is one of the primary economic development tools in the region,” Hulit said Tuesday, adding that she is “thrilled and honored” to be able to combine her economic experience with her desire to be involved in public service to help small businesses in Maine and New England.

“The greatest opportunity for recovery in the recession is to help small business gain access to capital,” she said. Her mission in her new role will be to market SBA programs and resources to small businesses in partnership with financial institutions, she said.

Since 2002, Hulit has been the senior vice president for commercial lending at Citizens Bank in Portland. For 10 years prior to that position, she was vice president and relationship manager of corporate banking at Key Bank.

From 1988 to 1992,  Hulit served as deputy director of internal commerce for the Maine Department of Economic and Community Development. She co-chaired the Governor’s Advisory Council on International Trade under former Gov. Angus King. In the 1980s, she served as an international trade assistant and later became the acting director of the Office of International Trade Policy at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in Washington, D.C.

Hulit, a Democrat who ran unsuccessfully last year for the state Senate in District 11, was recommended for the SBA position by U.S. Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, the ranking member of the Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship. In early June, Snowe sent a letter outlining Hulit’s qualifications and accomplishments to President Barack Obama.

“Jeanne Hulit is a tremendously intelligent individual whose background and expertise will serve her well as the next SBA regional administrator for New England,” Snowe said in an Aug. 10 press release.

Hulit, who received her bachelor’s degree in international studies from the American University in Washington, D.C., in 1980, is married and has two children.

She will begin her new position in two weeks. Though the job is based out of Boston and requires extensive travel throughout New England, she said she plans to keep her Falmouth residence and come back for the weekends.

Hulit succeeds Charles Summers of Scarborough, a former state senator and aide to Snowe, who ran unsuccessfully last year for Congress.

Peggy Roberts can be reached at 781-3661 ext. 125 or proberts@theforecaster.net.

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