March 19, 2024

Heidi Bell receives special entrepreneur award

AMES — The Iowa Small Business Development Center (SBDC) announced the 2013 award winners for its two special entrepreneur awards.

Heidi Bell, the owner of From The Ground in Leon, is the 2013 Deb Dalziel Woman Entrepreneur Achievement Award winner. Michael Sexton, the founder and owner of Real Time Ag in Rockwell City, is the 2013 Neal Smith Entrepreneur of the Year Award winner.

The Deb Dalziel Woman Entrepreneur Achievement Award honors an Iowa woman entrepreneur who has significantly changed or improved her life and the lives of others.

The award is presented in memory of Deb Dalziel, a devoted small business advocate who was director of the Small Business Development Center at Southeastern Community College in Burlington from 1987 until her death from cancer in 1999 at the age of 44.

Dave McLaren, director of the South Central Iowa Small Business Development Center in Creston, nominated Bell for the Deb Dalziel Award because she is a successful business owner, active in her community, supporter of rural economic development, and has given two other entrepreneurial women the opportunity to grow their businesses in Leon.

The two special entrepreneur awards will be presented to the winners in a special ceremony on March 4, 2014 at the state capitol in Des Moines.

The Iowa Small Business Development Center program is an outreach program of Iowa State University’s College of Business. Partially funded by the U.S. Small Business Administration, the organization has 15 regional assistance centers located strategically across the state and one international trade center located centrally. Since program inception in 1981, the center has helped hundreds of thousands of Iowa businesses and entrepreneurs through free, customized, professional business counseling and practical, affordable training.

For more information on these two award programs and Iowa Small Business Development Center programs or services, call 515-294-2030 or visit www.iowasbdc.org.