I had the pleasure of meeting Maria Contreras-Sweet, head of the US Small Business Administration and the voice of small business on the President Cabinet during her trip to Wausau yesterday.  She spent the morning meeting with city officials and downtown developers.   In the afternoon I joined the roundtable hosted by the Wausau Region Chamber of Commerce – good networking and good conversation.

WPI has worked in partnership with the SBA for many years.

Wisconsin is very fortunate to have Eric Ness, WI District Director and Marianne O’Brien Markowitz, Regional Administrator advocating for Wisconsin’s small businesses.

The last scheduled event was a visit to one of WPI’s clients – Applied Fab & Machining (AFM) owned by Tim Sheridan.  Tim gave a tour to the Administrator as well as other US SBA officials and discussed his journey and success.  AMF started as a one man operation and over the last 6 years has grown to 22 employees, over $1 million in federal contracts and work with numerous Federal prime contractors.  AFM is a service disabled veteran owned business (verified federally and for the State of Wisconsin), is ISO 9001 and AS9100 certified and ITAR registered.

Tim has worked hard and is a successful supplier to the Department of Defense and other agencies. We look forward to continuing to work with Tim in his efforts to continue growing his government sales.

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We are kicking off our first Pre-Marketplace workshop on Friday September 16 with the Urban League of Milwaukee.  10 sessions are scheduled across the State.  Find details at www.wispro.org

Marketplace 2016 is scheduled for December 13-14 2016 in Milwaukee.  WPI will again be supporting the One-on-One meetings scheduled for December 14. Federal, Corporate, State and Local buyers will be joining us – we will start posting confirming attendees in October. Additional information can be found at https://premarketplacewi.org/marketplace-2016-buyer-meetings/.