Matthew ("Matt") Stevens: SVOG Program Director

In the archive

Institution · office: SBA · Office of Disaster Assistance (SVOG Program Director) · Type: career (not stated verbatim in a first-party source)
Tenure (relief-relevant): SVOG Program Director in 2021, through the program's award and closeout phases (into 2022).

Matt Stevens ran the Shuttered Venue Operators Grant, the $16.25 billion program for theaters, live-music venues and other cultural businesses, as SBA's Program Director inside the Office of Disaster Assistance.¹²³ By July 2022 he reported $14.57 billion paid to more than 13,000 grantees.⁴ SBA's Inspector General later found that the agency sped up those awards by presuming applicants' statements true, and that $544 million in potential improper payments was still to be recovered in late 2024.⁵⁶

The job

Stevens entered SBA as a 2012 Presidential Management Fellow; no first-party source states verbatim that he was career staff, but he was not a political appointee.¹³ As SVOG director he reported up through the Office of Disaster Assistance to its associate administrator and the Administrator, Isabella Casillas Guzman. The job covered application processing, awards and supplemental grants, grantee guidance and public reporting of the numbers. His grade and salary are not in a first-party document.

Before SVOG

He holds a B.A. in economics and Spanish from Southwestern University in Georgetown, Texas, and an M.B.A. from the University of Texas at Austin's McCombs School of Business.¹³ He worked with small-business owners as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Ecuador, with earlier stops at Milliman, TXU Energy, The Plan Fund and the Greater Dallas Hispanic Chamber of Commerce's Business Assistance Center. At SBA from 2012 he worked in the Office of Entrepreneurial Development, eventually leading the Regional Innovation Clusters program. He also served briefly as a fellow at the State Department and, between SBA stints, on defense-manufacturing and community programs at the Defense Department's OLDCC. He returned to SBA in 2021 to run SVOG.¹³

Running SVOG

Congress gave the program $15 billion in December 2020 and $1.25 billion more in the American Rescue Plan.⁵ The application portal opened April 8, 2021, malfunctioned within hours and was shut that afternoon.⁷ SBA's Inspector General put the delay at "over 2 weeks."⁵ Part of the application system was built by a contractor founded by Kevin M. Burke of Centuria Corporation.

In June 2021 SBA made what it called a "program refresh" to speed things up. According to the Inspector General, staff stopped using the portal to track each eligibility requirement and switched to a manual checklist. They were told to presume applicants' assertions true unless there was a clear sign of fraud, and were held to four hours per application. SBA also stopped pulling IRS tax transcripts for awards under $500,000 and stopped validating certain Do Not Pay matches. Of the awards the Inspector General sampled, it questioned 47 worth about $22.9 million as ineligible.⁵

The money then moved. In an August 27, 2021 SBA release Stevens announced about $9 billion awarded to about 11,500 venues and the opening of supplemental grants.² At the July 2022 National Independent Venue Association conference he reported $14.57 billion disbursed to more than 13,000 grantees, $9.26 billion of it to businesses with fewer than 50 employees; he also sat on the conference's SVOG closeout workshop.⁴⁸ The award-level file is at SVOG awards. SBA's SVOG FAQs were issued institutionally and unsigned, and we found no congressional testimony by him.⁹

What the audits found after

The Inspector General's July 2025 audit counted $14.6 billion paid to 13,011 awardees, including supplemental awards to 9,800 of them. As of October 2024 SBA had identified $544 million in potential improper payments to recover but had sent one demand letter, in January 2024, and referred no recipients to Treasury. It had closed 10,421 awards, 80 percent, leaving 2,590 worth $4.8 billion open. SBA agreed or partially agreed with five of six recommendations.¹⁰ A July 2024 report (24-21) examined SVOG's post-award review process.¹¹ These are audit findings; none names Stevens.

Since 2022

After SVOG, Stevens became Director of MySBA, the agency's unified borrower platform. In August 2024 he was named Deputy Associate Administrator of SBA's Office of Investment and Innovation, leading its enterprise shared services, and sba.gov still listed him there in an April 2025 archived copy of the page.³¹² By September 2026 his sba.gov biography page returned "not found," and the office's page listed Tami Howie as acting Deputy Associate Administrator.¹³

Documents on this site

Original source documents and archived copies

Isabella Casillas Guzman — administrator during the SVOG rollout he ran.
Kevin M. Burke (Centuria Corporation) — founder of the contractor that built part of the SVOG application system.
Hannibal "Mike" Ware — Inspector General whose office audited SVOG.
Ben Cardin — Senate Small Business chair who announced Maryland's SVOG awards in July 2021.

Sources (first-party)

SBA official bio, "Matthew Stevens" (archived full text). Original: https://www.sba.gov/person/matthew-stevens (archived: Matthew Stevens, Deputy Associate Administrator, Office of Investment and Innovation (SBA) (original: web.archive.org · stored capture)) ↩
SBA news release 21-75, "SBA Opens Supplemental Grant Applications for Shuttered Venue Operators Grant Awardees" (Aug. 27, 2021) — quotes "SBA Shuttered Venue Operators Grant Program Director Matthew Stevens." Original: https://www.sba.gov/article/2021/aug/27/sba-opens-supplemental-grant-applications-shuttered-venue-operators-grant-awardees SBA news release 21-75, "SBA Opens Supplemental Grant Applications for Shuttered Venue Operators Grant Awardees" Aug.... (stored capture) ↩
ExecutiveGov, "Matt Stevens Named Deputy Associate Administrator at SBA Investment and Innovation Office" (Aug. 2024) — full chronology + education. Original: https://www.executivegov.com/articles/matt-stevens-named-deputy-associate-administrator-at-sba-investment-and-innovation-office ExecutiveGov, "Matt Stevens Named Deputy Associate Administrator at SBA Investment and Innovation Office" Aug. 2024 —... (stored capture) ↩
Variety, NIVA Conference coverage (July 2022) — Stevens as SVOG director reporting disbursement figures. Original: https://variety.com/2022/music/news/niva-conference-cleveland-independent-venue-association-1235316552/ Variety, NIVA Conference coverage July 2022 — Stevens as SVOG director reporting disbursement figures (stored capture) ↩
SBA OIG Report 24-02, "SBA's Internal Controls to Prevent Shuttered Venue Operators Grants to Ineligible Applicants," Oct. 25, 2023. ↩
Same report as ¹⁰. ↩
Billboard, SVOG application-portal shutdown coverage (Apr. 2021) — the rollout he managed. Billboard, SVOG application-portal shutdown coverage, April 2021 (original: billboard.com · stored capture) ↩
CelebrityAccess, NIVA Conference panel lineup (lists Stevens on the SVOG closeout workshop). Original: https://celebrityaccess.com/2022/06/24/niva-reveals-the-featured-panels-for-the-first-ever-niva-conference/ CelebrityAccess, NIVA Conference panel lineup lists Stevens on the SVOG closeout workshop (stored capture) ↩
SBA, SVOG FAQ (institutional, unsigned). Original: https://www.sba.gov/document/support-faq-regarding-shuttered-venue-operators-grant-svog FAQ Regarding Shuttered Venue Operators Grant (SVOG) — SBA (stored capture) ↩
SBA OIG Report 25-21, "SBA's Oversight of Shuttered Venue Operators Grant Recipients," July 22, 2025. Also at SBA OIG, "SBA's Oversight of Shuttered Venue Operators Grant Recipients" Report 25-21 — program context. Original: https://www.oversight.gov/reports/audit/sbas-oversight-shuttered-venue-operators-grant-recipients SBA OIG, "SBA's Oversight of Shuttered Venue Operators Grant Recipients" Report 25-21 — program context (stored capture) ↩
SBA OIG Report 24-21, "Improvements Needed in SBA's Shuttered Venue Operators Grant Post-Award Review Process," July 10, 2024. ↩
Internet Archive copy of his SBA bio (Apr. 21, 2025), still listing the OII Deputy AA role. Original: http://web.archive.org/web/20250421075339/https://www.sba.gov/person/matthew-stevens Matthew Stevens, Deputy Associate Administrator, Office of Investment and Innovation (SBA) (stored capture) ↩
SBA, Office of Investment and Innovation page (viewed Sept. 26, 2026), leadership listing. Original: https://www.sba.gov/about-sba/sba-locations/headquarters-offices/office-investment-innovation; SBA biography URL Matthew Stevens, Deputy Associate Administrator, Office of Investment and Innovation (SBA) (original: sba.gov) returned HTTP 404 the same day. ↩

Matthew ("Matt") Stevens