The City of Austin Small Business Development Program was honored on October 26, 2005 to have won the Austin City Employee’s Choice Award in the category of “Gutsy”. An estimated 1,300 people attended the Academy Awards-styled event honoring City employees at the Palmer Events Center. The “Gutsy” category is defined as: “We honor the public trust by conducting ourselves with integrity and doing what it takes to get the job done right”.
City Manager Toby Futrell presented the awards to the winners in 10 categories. More than 90 employees were finalists for the awards. The Small Business Development Program was nominated along with two individuals for the Gutsy category. At the ceremony, City Manager Futrell stated “You know the old Texas saying ‘No guts, no glory? Well that phrase serves us well, because there’s a lot of blood, sweat and guts between dreams and success and we define success. These finalists highlight just a few of our successes.” SBDP customer Lisa Gaynor was interviewed on video and praised the SBDP team by saying, “It’s very emotional – it should be very scary. And for some reason for the first time in my life I wasn’t frightened. I’m taking out loans as big as my house loan was and thinking ‘This is fine – I’m going to make money with this’. And just from having the reassurance of the conversations with the Small Business Development Program team, I really felt like, you know what? This is going to work, this is going to be fine and walking into that big board room with all those bankers, I didn’t have a problem, because I was ready.” Lisa Gaynor opened her business “Design It with Consignment” in 2005 and is enjoying remarkable success.
The City Manager continued, “Now when you think of Austin you think of small unique businesses – it’s part of keeping Austin weird, isn’t it? Most cities have about 65-70% of their employment in small businesses. But Austin has about 85% of our employment in small business because we value small, unique businesses. But small unique businesses live on the margin, they live on the cusp. That’s a gutsy way to live. And this is the team that helped put a safety net under those small businesses in our community. They do it by providing business classes, by providing resources, by industry specific conferences, by connecting lenders and capital with those small businesses. Just the Business Solutions Center that this team started, started with an idea and a couple of pieces of used furniture that they pulled out of an old airport hangar. And today, it’s a Business Center for small businesses all over the city. So, a gutsy team working with a gutsy group of people that helps keep Austin weird. Let’s give this team, this group, a round of applause.”
The Small Business Development Program’s winning team is made up of the following individuals:
Rosy Jalifi
Small Business Administrator
Michelle Bledsoe
Business Information Center Coordinator
Cindy Garcia
Business Development Counselor
Don Lujan
Electronic Plan Room Coordinator
Davetta Martinez
Customer Service Associate – Business Solutions Center
Ernest Rodriguez
Business Systems Analyst
Blake Smith
Business Development Counselor
Yolanda Strey
Business Development Counselor Associate
And
Vicky Valdez
Senior Coordinator – Development Information Resources
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