SBA award winners build their communities

For the 42nd year, SBA will name a National Small Business Person of the Year.

Honorees are people who have taken a risk to start a business, worked hard to build it and are determined to be successful.

This award and other SBA Champion awards – selected from applications across the nation in three separate judging stages each year – truly reward the best in small business or small-business support categories.

It can truly be said that each year’s winners are at the

top of their game – monetarily, personally, in business success, in terms of their extensive community participation and in providing stable and sustaining jobs for their employees.

During the many components of SBA Expo ‘05: Celebrating Small Business Week, April 25-28, my heart will be with the winners from the Region VII area, including Kansas, Nebraska, Missouri and Iowa. But I know from being involved in past celebrations that whoever wins does so only by the width of a hair – and truly, all of them are the crème de la crème.

Kansas’ Small Business Person of the Year Jay Schroetlin owns the Kinsley Food Pride store, and he makes a huge difference in the quality of life in his rural town.

Frank Ashby Russell, who founded and runs GeoLearning Inc., out of West Des Moines, Iowa, put all his prior experience to the test to provide Internet-based learning systems to both the federal government and industry giants such as Dell, Nike, Costco and Ticketmaster.

Donna Herrick and former employee Roger Nesbitt from Omaha carried on the management of Producer Hybrids in Battle Creek, Neb., after Donna’s husband passed away, and continued to build and expand the fledgling hybrid seed company.

Missourian Brenda Newberry founded The Newberry Group Inc. with $1,000 and initial employment of two in 1996.

Today, this minority- and veteran-owned information technology firm in St. Peters sells more than $18 million worth of

services each year and employs 105.

Tremendous stories all.

I offer my congratulations to all Region VII Champions and those who have won the already judged national competition.

Mabel Alarcon-Craven, a small-business banker in Omaha, is SBA’s 2005 National Financial Services Champion. Joy Wheeler, owner and manager of FirstGuard Health Plan in Kansas City, is the 2005 Women in Business Champion. Patrick Heavey is the 2005 Veteran Business Champion and serves veterans from the St. Louis Veterans Business Resource Center.

All of the winners truly care about their small business clients.

Having met winners from each state and region for several years now, I can attest that whether they run the corner store or export products successfully on the international market, all are risk-takers, innovators, hard workers and heroic builders of our local and national communities.

Sam Jones is the Region VII SBA Administrator.