LBM Expo Breakfast Key Insights from the LBM Expo Breakfast: How SBA Leader Lisa Shimkat Is Reshaping Policy for Builders and Manufacturers
Hosted by the Northeastern Retail Lumber Association
There are rooms at trade shows where people simply just check their phones. And then there are rooms where the future of an industry hangs in the air. At the Small Business Administration breakfast during the LBM Expo, it was the second kind. Builders leaned forward. Yard owners stopped whispering. Manufacturers put their coffee cups down. When Lisa Shimkat, Associate Administrator of Field Operations for the U.S. Small Business Administration, stepped to the podium, it didn’t simply feel like a government official addressing an audience. It felt like the industry finally being invited into the conversation.
“We may have a lot of power in D.C.,” Shimkat said quietly, “but the knowledge is out here in the field. And we need to pull that knowledge back. That’s how we make true change.” For the people in that room — the ones fighting supply shortages, regulatory delays, workforce challenges, and cash-flow pressure every day — those words mattered. And in that moment, the people who build this country knew Washington was listening. A Voice That Knows What It Means to Run a Business Shimkat didn’t speak like a bureaucrat. She spoke like someone who has walked plant floors and signed paychecks.
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