The SBA Seattle District celebrated National Small Business Week on Wednesday, May 5. Hosted by SCORE and supported by the SBA Resource Partner Network, the event took place at the Museum of Flight and was attended by more than 300 SBA resource partners, small business lenders and small businesses. The annual event, which typically takes place during National Small Business Week has not been held in person during the past two years due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
An evening full of awards and recognition for local small businesses and resource providers was kicked off by keynote speaker Dr. Lisa Brown, Director of Washington State Department of Commerce. SBA Seattle District Director Kerrie Hurd greeted the audience in the spirit of “collaboration across our ecosystem of small business supporters.” Acknowledging the SBA resource and lending partners in attendance, Hurd thanked everyone for the tremendous undertaking and collective teamwork that has taken place to deliver SBA COVID Relief Programs and small business funding across Washington state and northern Idaho.
The evening culminated with the presentation of awards to small business winners in 4 categories. The award for 2022 Rural Small Business of the Year was give to Bluebird. Brooke and Sam Lucy attended the event with Okanogan County SBDC representative Lew Blakney, who nominated Bluebird in December.
SBA is the only cabinet-level federal agency fully dedicated to small business and provides counseling, capital, and contracting expertise for small businesses. Some of the guidelines for SBA recognition include growth in net worth and business expansion, increase in jobs and sales, innovativeness of products or services, response to adversity and contributions to community-oriented projects.
Bluebird has worked with the SBDC services over the years for education and planning purposes. During the pandemic, Bluebird utilized SBA resources to provide funding to hire more employees during the baking and cooking boom, and to help transition to Bluebird’s new facility which they are scheduled to move into next month.
