Message from the Chair
Member Spotlight
Mark Ritchie
This month, the SBRRB is spotlighting DBEDT’s designated ex officio SBRRB member who is also a DBEDT employee, Mr. Mark Ritchie.
Prior to DBEDT, Mark served in the following positions: Chief Business Development Officer at Kuehnle AgroSystems, Inc., a Hawaii life science start-up; Managing Director at Enterprise Honolulu (EH), a private sector Oahu economic development agency; Product Manager at SGI (SiIicon Graphics), a high performance computing company; and various economic development positions in several global trade and inward investment organizations.
Mr. Ritchie joined DBEDT six years ago as the Branch Chief for Business Support Services. Mark’s branch has responsibility for the Enterprise Zone and the CBED (Community-based Economic Development) programs, which includes assisting and promoting Hawaii’s small business community to be successful.
- How long have you been an ex officio SBRRB member and how do you see your professional background to be integral in understanding small businesses’ rules and regulations?
Mr. Ritchie has been an ex-officio member of the SBRRB since 2014. In his experience at DBEDT, he has interacted with Hawaii’s small business community and learned how administrative rules can impact the operations of small businesses. In his prior experience at a start-up company with 10 employees, he experienced first-hand Hawaii’s regulatory environment interacting with many state government departments on a variety of business issues on behalf of the company he represented.
- Why do you believe the SBRRB is an essential State board?
Small business is the backbone of Hawaii’s economy, much more so than in many other states. The SBRRB encourages state agencies to consider the small business impacts of their administrative rules before they are finalized and gives effected businesses the chance to offer input into the writing of the rules.
- What do you believe are the important factors in the Board’s continued existence?
The SBRRB does not exist to promote the de-regulation of Hawaii’s economy. Rather, it is to help make the rules fair and not effect small businesses in a detrimental way. Through listening and compromise, this can be achieved.
- What do you believe are the important factors in the Board’s continued existence?
The most important work of the SBRRB Mr. Ritchie thinks happens before the Board votes on any rule. That is, a government department reaches out to the effected business community and gets feedback and suggestions to write rules so that the small businesses are not adversely impacted.
- Where do you see the SBRRB in the next two to three years?
Mr. Ritchie sees more sophisticated outreach to the business community as a goal for the coming years. No one has the time to follow all upcoming new or amended rules. Through our upgraded website we can try to target notifications on rules by business sector or government department.
-Rob Cundiff
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