Nygina Mills has served in numerous leadership positions, including Associate General Counsel for Financial Law at SBA. In this role, she led a team of 30 lawyers and administrative staff in support of more than ten organizational departments within SBA, including the agency’s Office of Capital Access. Her team provided clearance for debenture and private equity access totaling billions of dollars, enabling SBA to deliver more than 62,000 new loans worth over $40 billion in fiscal year 2022 alone.
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Prior to this role, Nygina Mills served as Director of the Strategic Initiatives Directorate at the U.S. Department of Education. She set the strategic direction for and performed oversight for sub-agency strategic initiatives that impacted programs serving 1,600 employees administering $120 billion in annual grant and loan funding alongside a total lending portfolio worth $1.6 trillion. Her responsibilities included enhanced performance tracking and transparency management during the lifecycle of major pandemic-era programs such as the CARES Act and the American Rescue Plan.
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In addition to the finance, banking, transportation and technology sectors, Ms. Mills’ career as a regulator also includes aerospace and defense. From 2012 to 2017, she served as Associate Counsel (Contracts) for the Defense Contract Management Agency (DCMA) overseeing a federal contract portfolio worth $400 billion. From 2017 to 2020, Ms. Mills served as Assistant General Counsel for the Defense Contract Audit Agency (DCAA) where she oversaw teams providing U.S. and international legal advice on contract cost resolutions. In both roles, Ms. Mills and her team supporting Contracting Officers worked closely with major private defense contractors like Lockheed and Northrop Grumman. Prior to her work in the public sector, Nygina Mills worked in private legal practice, at firms including Crowell & Moring LLP, Paul Hastings,LLP and FisherBroyles, LLP. She was a Partner with Perry Krumsiek & Jack, LLP and later FisherBroyles, where she specialized in mergers and acquisitions, corporate governance, financial regulation, and federal government contracts.
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Over the course of her career, Ms. Mills has earned numerous awards and accolades. She was honored as a Top 1% Fellow of the American Bar Association Foundation and was named a Harvard Kennedy School Senior Executive Fellow. She is a current member of CodeX, a Stanford Center for Legal Informatics devoted to advancing the responsible use of artificial intelligence in legal practice. Ms. Mills also collaborates with the Artificial Intelligence Center of Excellence, an executive branch collaboration developing artificial intelligence solutions to address business and governance challenges.
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Since 2020, Ms. Mills has been a member of the ABA Section of Business Law – Private Equity and Venture Capital Committee. Also, from 2016 to present, she is a member of the ABA Section of Public Contract Law, serving as vice chair of its Accounting Cost and Pricing Committee and Commercial Products and Services Committee.
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Nygina Mills is a noted public speaker, writer and panelist on legal and regulatory issues related to artificial intelligence, banking and finance, ESG, and government contracting. Over the past decade, she has participated in or moderated numerous discussions hosted by the American Bar Association, Harvard Business School, and the Public Contracting Institute. She is a NACD-certified director.
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Ms. Mills earned a J.D. from Harvard Law School and is a graduate of the Harvard Business School. She resides in the Washington, D.C. area.