UW’s Wyoming APEX Accelerator and Wyoming SBA to Host Government Contracting Opportunity Workshops

Josh Dorrell, CEO of the Wyoming Business Council, will head a workshop titled “Wyoming HUBZone Updates and Preparing for New Contracting Opportunities” Tuesday, March 7, from noon-1 p.m. at the Laramie County Library, located at 2200 Pioneer Ave. in Cheyenne. The presentation will take place in the Cottonwood Room.

The workshop is hosted by the Wyoming Small Business Administration (SBA). To register, go here. Registration is free.

Laura Maas, deputy director of SBA’s Office of the Historically Underutilized Business Zone (HUBZone) Program, will join the workshop to share Wyoming HUBZone program updates and more information on how contracting professionals and Wyoming small businesses can maximize their opportunities to use the program to create jobs in Wyoming. Other speakers are Aikta Marcoulier, regional administrator for SBA Region VIII, and Amy Lea, district director for the SBA Wyoming District office. 

The SBA’s HUBZone program helps small businesses in urban and rural communities gain preferential access to federal procurement opportunities. The HUBZone program fuels small-business growth in historically underutilized business zones with a goal of awarding at least 3 percent of federal contract dollars to HUBZone-certified companies each year. The government limits competition for certain contracts to businesses in historically underutilized business zones. It also provides preferential consideration to those businesses in full and open competition.

Following the Wyoming SBA workshop, Wyoming APEX Accelerator, housed at the University of Wyoming, hosts a government contracting in-person matchmaking event from 1-3 p.m. The session will introduce free resources to help small-business owners navigate the federal procurement process; meet individually with federal agencies to talk about supplies and services they buy and how they purchase them; market their products or services one-on-one to the participating federal agencies; and obtain a share of the millions of dollars spent by the federal government each year in Wyoming. To register, go here.

Agencies that will be represented are the General Services Administration; F.E. Warren Air Force Base; National Park Service Midwest Region; National Park Service Interior regions 6-8; U.S. Department of Agriculture; Veterans Affairs; Wyoming National Guard; U.S. Forest Service; and the Bureau of Land Management.

For more information, call Maureen Johnson, marketing, communication and database manager for the Wyoming Small Business Development Center (SBDC) Network, at (307) 343-0925 or email mjohn125@uwyo.edu.

The Wyoming SBDC Network offers business expertise to help Wyoming residents think about, launch, grow, reinvent or exit their business. The Wyoming SBDC Network is hosted by UW with state funds from the Wyoming Business Council and funded, in part, through a cooperative agreement with the U.S. SBA.