Willette LeGrant joined the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) in February 2024 and currently serves as the District Director for the Illinois District Office. She is responsible for promoting small business resources across Illinois including access to capital, counseling and training, government contracting, international exporting, and disaster relief.

Prior to joining SBA, Ms. LeGrant served as the Deputy Division Chief, Field Operations for the Census Bureau, Department of Commerce. During her 16-year career with the Census Bureau, Ms. LeGrant was responsible for leading six regional offices in data collection operations for numerous surveys to include the Decennial Census, American Community Survey, Current Population Survey, and American Housing Survey.  In 2010 and 2020, Ms. LeGrant led two national outreach campaigns for hard-to-enumerate communities during the 2010 and 2020 decennials.  Ms. LeGrant was also responsible for managing the information technology used to deploy and maintain economic surveys and economic indicators to include the Economic Census, Census of Governments, 17 Economic Indicators, and the Annual Business Survey.

Ms. LeGrant has served as a program manager for NASA’s government wide acquisition contract vehicle assisting federal agencies to procure IT services from small businesses.  In addition to her federal government experience, she has also owned two successful small businesses and served as an Army Reservist. 

In 2012 Georgia Marsh assumed the responsibilities of Chief Development Officer for the WBDC. In this capacity she ensures fund development supports organizational operations and culture; fulfills funder commitments, stewards donor and corporate relationships and meets fiduciary responsibilities for investments. Georgia is a business instructor at V-WISE (Veteran Women Igniting the Spirit of Entrepreneurship and is a Founding member and on the Executive Committee and Board of Directors of the National Veteran Owned Business Association (NaVOBA), which certifies veteran owned businesses.

Prior to the WBDC, Georgia operated her own advisory and consulting business and worked several years as a Director in KPMG’s Privacy and Information Protection Security Practice.

However, most of her distinguished career was spent in public sector executive positions at the state and federal government levels.  As a technology innovator, she was the lead architect for numerous major technology initiatives focused on making government more accountable and accessible to businesses. She worked on these initiatives collaboratively with the U.S. Small Business Administration. It was this work that led to Georgia being recruited by the Federal Government’s General Service Administration to serve as the Deputy Executive in Charge of a Presidential Initiative targeted at facilitating secure online transactions between businesses and federal government agencies.

Georgia has been a nationally recognized leader in driving adoption of emerging technologies for the modernization of government. She won many awards and honors for her pioneering work and was an invited speaker on government modernization and online information protection at various national/international forums, conferences, panels and workshops.