On Thursday, August 25, Administrator Isabella Casillas Guzman, head of the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) and the voice for America’s 33 million small businesses in President Biden’s Cabinet, will officially announce the return of ChallengeHER — a government contracting education initiative to help women-owned small businesses gain access to federal contracts and encourage participation in the SBA’s Women-Owned Small Business (WOSB) Federal Contracting Program.

The ChallengeHer initiative is a co-sponsorship with Women Impacting Public Policy (WIPP) and American Express (AMEX) and will hold its first in-person event in 2022 in Silver Spring, Maryland.

Last month, the SBA announced that the Biden-Harris Administration exceeded its small business federal contracting goal, awarding 27.2 percent or $154.2 billion in federal contract dollars to small businesses in FY21. Alongside a pledge to encourage more investment in Women-owned Small Businesses (WOSB), the Agency also noted WOSBs received more than $26B in federal contracts.

Following passage of the bipartisan CHIPS and Science Act — signed by President Biden on August 9, 2022 — American women-owned small manufacturers stand to benefit from direct, federal investment in growing our domestic manufacturing footprint which will lower costs for Americans by bringing supply chains home.

ChallengeHER is free for all registrants as part of a national initiative designed to promote the WOSB Federal Contract Program, bring more women-owned firms into the federal government’s supply chain, and provide an avenue for government agencies to meet qualified women-owned small business contractors.