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Rebecca Andino

Executive

PPP · EIDL
Type
Person
Role
Executive
Programs
PPP, EIDL
Updated

The profile

Founder of Highlight Technologies, the Fairfax, Virginia contractor that staffed SBA's pandemic loan processing. SBA gave Highlight four COVID-19 call orders worth about $234 million; its inspector general found SBA paid at least $3.8 million more than it needed to.

Identity and role

Rebecca Andino founded Highlight Technologies in 2008 and was its chief executive for 15 years, through the pandemic. Highlight, based in Fairfax, Virginia, sells IT, loan-processing and other services to federal agencies. She handed the chief executive's job to Aarish Gokaldas on July 17, 2023. Highlight's website says she was chairperson of its board from 2022 to 2025.

Biography / career arc

Highlight's biography credits Andino with more than 20 years in technology, security and program-management roles supporting the federal government. It says she started Highlight "from our founder's kitchen table" in 2008 and grew it from a small, woman-owned business into a large prime contractor. She guided its conversion to a company wholly owned by its employees. She is a former co-chair of the AFCEA Small Business Committee.

Pandemic-relief / PPP-EIDL role

Highlight was already an SBA contractor when the pandemic began. SBA's inspector general reviewed the relationship in July 2023. Under a blanket purchase agreement awarded in 2017, SBA issued Highlight 29 call orders worth $254 million through 2021. Four of them, worth about $234 million, were for the COVID-19 programs and were awarded between April 2020 and June 2021. For PPP, Highlight helped process applications and performed risk management and financial analysis.

Highlight's own account, published November 17, 2021, says it gave SBA's Office of Disaster Assistance "full lifecycle loan processing support" and supplied the Office of Capital Access with loan-servicing staff who reviewed PPP loans for forgiveness. It says its staff on the EIDL surge "processed over 1 million loans to small businesses." "It was not long ago that we were a very small business ourselves," Andino said.

Their own relief

The SBA's PPP data show no loan to Highlight Technologies of Fairfax. Two borrowers of the same name, in Duluth, Georgia and Nampa, Idaho, are unrelated. No relief loan to Andino personally appears in the documents cited here.

Andino has not been charged with any crime, and the inspector general's report is a finding about SBA's contracting, not a charge against Highlight. It found that contracting officials changed a contract term so Highlight could bill all labor at Washington, D.C.-region rates, the highest proposed, instead of the rates set for each loan center. SBA paid $3,781,607 more in about a year with no added benefit. The inspector general's table covers invoices from April 1, 2020 to April 15, 2021. Loan specialists in Little Rock, Arkansas billed 196,363 hours at $7.90 an hour above the original rate, $1,551,265; those in Fresno, California billed 191,096 hours at the same premium, $1,509,662. For new work at the Dallas-Fort Worth office, SBA issued a separate order at the D.C. rates instead of the lower rates already set for that office. The office also found that SBA did not monitor the subcontracting limit on set-aside work. On five call orders worth nearly $2.9 million, Highlight subcontracted nearly $2.7 million, keeping about $200,000 and exceeding the 50% limit by $1.2 million. Questioned costs totaled $5,010,382. SBA management agreed or partly agreed with two of the four recommendations and disagreed with two.

Where they are now (2025–2026)

Gokaldas remains chief executive. When he was hired, Highlight's board consisted of Andino, Paul P. Peou, Elma Levy and Nancy Peters. Highlight's website lists Andino as founder and as a volunteer for the AFCEA Mentor Protégé Program and Women Giving Back.

Sources

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