JOHN HICKMAN, DIRECTOR

 John is currently the Regional Director of the Eastern Shore Small Business Development Center. Before that he served as a business consultant for the center helping entrepreneurs with their business plans, financing and marketing.

John is a native of the Eastern Shore and brings a range of skills from the banking, recreation, food and agriculture industries. In his experience, he expanded the market for the heirloom Hayman sweet potato to reach from North Carolina to Massachusetts and developed a snack food made Haymans that is sold nationally. He has skills in marketing of both products and services, management and lending. He holds BS in Agricultural Economics from N. C. State University and a MBA from the College of William and Mary.

SUMATHY CHANDRASHEKAR, BUSINESS COUNSELOR

Sumathy Chandrashekar is a professor of Information and Decision Sciences at the Perdue School of Business, Salisbury University. She received her bachelor’s degree, majoring in Economics, History and Sociology, and her Master of Arts in Philosophy (M.A) from Bangalore University, India. Subsequent to that, she received her M.B.A. from Salisbury University and has nine years experience teaching basic statistics, regression analysis, and time-series forecasting, statistical quality control, and other related operations management topics to undergraduate students.

In addition to being faculty, Sumathy serves as a small business counselor at the Small Business Development Center at Salisbury University, and has considerable consulting experience. She works with area small businesses assisting them with writing business plans, formulating financial statements, performing financial analysis, market research and market analysis. She also has taught several business planning workshops.

Being a teacher in business and a business consultant has enabled Sumathy to enrich the classroom experience with real-life business situations and, by the same token, to be able to apply the academics to the small businesses she consults with.

LOIS HAGGERTY, BUSINESS COUNSELOR

Lois Haggerty joined the SBDC with 21 years experience as a small business owner and independent business consultant assisting a wide range of clients in evaluating new and expansion business opportunities and developing effective customer-focused strategies.  Her business consulting experience and expertise include market opportunity assessments, market strategy formulation, marketing plans, business and marketing coaching, business plans and strategic plans.  She has extensive experience consulting to both start-up and expanding small businesses across several industries, including manufacturing, distribution, technology, agriculture, healthcarea nd public sector economic development. 

Prior to establishing her consulting practice, Haggerty was the director of planning and market research at a 365 bed medical center in San Francisco, CA with responsibility for strategic planning, market research and business development.  She holds a B.A. from Ohio State and an M.S. from Rutgers University.

RICHARD LOEFFLER, BUSINESS COUNSELOR

Richard (Rich) Loeffler came to the Small Business Development Center as a business consultant in 2001 after growing bored with retirement! For the preceding three years, he had enjoyed time to travel and enjoy his family, but missed the activity of a full business life.

Prior to retirement, Rich had been involved in a manufacturing concern in Dorchester County which had grown from two employees to just over 300, at which time He decided to sell his interest in the business to his partners. The business went from $0 to over $30 million in sales per year during Rich’s twenty-odd year involvement.

Rich is a graduate mechanical engineer who learned that in order to successfully run your own business, you need to understand all aspects of the business – from engineering to accounting and from human resources to sales & marketing. During the course of Rich’s career, his business ventures took him from large companies to progressively smaller ones – until the small company he was involved with became large! Rich is very familiar with the problems small start-up companies encounter.

BROOKE BEREZOWSKI, TRAINING COORDINATOR

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