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.

DIANE HAHN, BUSINESS COUNSELOR

Diane Hahn is a business counselor for the Maryland Small Business Development Center. Diane has fifteen years of experience in marketing, product development, consulting and training to her new position. Her career includes small business consulting with the Maine Small Business Development Center and marketing management with Black & Decker in Towson, MD. In addition, she directed marketing and retail operations for The Foreside Company, an importer and national distributor of home decorative products that was named as one of America’s fastest-growing, privately-held businesses by Inc. Magazine in 1998. Diane recently moved to the Eastern Shore from southern Maine. She holds an MBA from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a BA from Boston College.

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 PRAMOV, TRAINING COORDINATOR

Brooke Pramov is the Training Coordinator for the Small Business Development Center’s Eastern Shore Region.  She is a graduate of Salisbury University with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Communication with a concentration in Interpersonal Communication and Organizational Management and a minor in Marketing. 

Brooke also has years of marketing experience; she had worked as a freelance marketing assistant, and now owns a small firm specializing in small and medium businesses marketing and organizational needs.  Additionally, she is networked in the community and is a member of the Salisbury Jaycees, the Salisbury Area Chamber of Commerce, Ocean City Chamber of Commerce and a licensed Realtor.

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