Winslow Sargeant

Winslow Sargeant is the sixth (6th) Chief Counsel for Advocacy for the Small Business Administration (SBA) and a former venture capital executive with a background in engineering. He received a recess appointment on August 19, 2010 by U.S. President Barack Obama. He was unanimously confirmed by the U.S. Senate to be Chief Counsel for Advocacy at the SBA on November 11, 2011. Sargeant was a managing director at a Madison, Wisconsin-based venture capital firm Venture Investors LLC. It "provided seed and early-stage money to high-potential health care and IT companies" including Alfalight, TomoTherapy, Third Wave and Promega.

Sargeant earned a Ph.D. in electrical engineering from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and is a Kauffman Fellow. He co-founded semiconductor integrated circuit design company Aanetcom in 1997 with seed money from Cisco Systems. The firm was sold to British Columbia's PMC-Sierra in 2000 after a $900 million bid and was later valued at more than 1.2 billion during the dotcom boom. In 2008, he co-founded Silatronix, a Madison, Wisconsin-based battery company.

At the SBA Office of Advocacy, Sargeant was "responsible for representing small businesses within the federal government’s law- and rule-making". From 2001 to 2005, he was Program Manager for Electronics at the National Science Foundation (NSF). He has been an advocate of technology transfer from university-sponsored research. He participated in President Obama's Regulatory Review and Startup America. Sargeant was the "Watchdog" of the Regulatory Flexibility Act (RFA) and worked with federal agencies to bring them into compliance with the RFA law. He signed more than 145 public comment letters about business regulations to more than 23 different rulemaking agencies. He published more than 100 economic research reports, including the Innovation Initiative report to the White House. Sargeant appointed ten small business regional advocates.

After more than four years as Chief Counsel for Advocacy, Sargeant resigned effective January 23, 2015.

Sargeant's family immigrated to the U.S. from Barbados. He grew up in Dorchester, Massachusetts. As a fifth grader, he was bused to predominantly white schools as part of the integration programs that were met with anti-busing protesters. He attended Boston Latin School (BLS) for his 7th and 8th years. He graduated from Dorchester High School.