Military Department - SARA Gold
Accepting the award is General Kevin Ellsworth

This Department has made "DVBE First" an official, executive supported program. Every executive from the Adjutant General down is totally committed to it. The department also continues its outreach program through its partnership with the Disabled Veterans Business Alliance and conversations with various providers throughout the state. Every conversation includes an effort to get the vendors to enroll as a small business or, if appropriate, as a DVBE. The department contracting officers even walk the vendors through the enrollment process.

California State Parks- SARA Silver
Accepting the award is Gayle Bohlmann

This Department instituted 6 percent DVBE participation requirement in service and public works contracts. This innovative business decision helped the Department exceed the overall 3 percent DVBE goal. In February 2008, the CA State Parks Summit was born. The Summit increased program awareness inspiring attendees to be advocates. The Summit's multi disciplined team generated new ideas for increasing SB and DVBE participation. The team voted and prioritized the Top 10 "short term" and "long term" ideas. Many recommendations are moving forward, some are easier to implement than others, but CSP is giving them all its best shot.

California Arts Council - SARA Bronze
Accepting the award is Lucy Mochizuki

This Department developed and implemented a new policy to increase SB/DVBE participation through administrative purchasing and contracting opportunities with SB/DVBE businesses. The Department's Small Business Advocate and the Contract Procurement Administrator work closely with all staff in purchasing and or contracting activities to ensure SB/DVBE participation.

Department of Industrial Relations SARA Honorable Mention
Accepting the is Award Karen Wong

The Director emphasized the importance of implementing the program to division chiefs and senior managers so that it could be relayed with authority to the procurement staff. The program participation goals plus the DVBE incentive were included in all formal solicitations. Compliance to statewide mandatory contracts using SB/DVBE consortiums were strictly monitored. SB/DVBE program implementations were emphasized during various procurement trainings given by the Business Management Unit.

Advocate of the Year - Gold
Maureen Moss (center) - Department of Consumer Affairs

By setting goals, education, communication (both written and verbal), focus, customer service skill, availability, knowledge and familiarity of the DGS website, and perseverance of this advocate the goals and objectives of this Department to improve and exceed SB/Micro Business (MB) and DVBE participation for the past year were realized. This Department finished fiscal year 2007/08 with DVBE participation at 5.41 percent and SB/MB participation at 31.62 percent. This Department has exceeded participation requirements in five of the last seven years for SBMB use, and four of the last seven years for DVBE use.

Advocate of the Year- Silver
Steve Ebo- California Department of Veterans Affairs

After his arrival in March 2007 and viewing the then current participation numbers, This Advocate made sure all department managers were aware of the mandated goals and provided the information necessary to try to boost the numbers. The advocate encouraged and made it easier for the requestors to begin utilizing more small business and DVBE vendors, at a minimum contacting the vendors for an opportunity to provide price quotes for commodities. This practice resulted in spending more dollars with certified vendors. This advocate had his staff continue to encourage non-certified vendors to become certified, thus enlarging his pool of small and DVBE vendors.

Advocate of the Year - Bronze
Robin McCune - California Department of Corrections Mule-Creek

This advocate and her staff emphasized collaboration among departments to achieve their goal. She helped facilitate research on how to expand and improve the DGS website content by transferring the data into more user friendly formats. She merged databases so our department staff could conveniently distinguish vendor information by goods or services. She worked diligently to ensure policies were implemented to support the SB/DVBE mission by directing all Interoffice Requisitions to the Business Service Officer. By educating staff and monitoring participation she increased participation goals and report accuracy.

Advocate of the Year - Bronze
Ronald O'Brien California Department of Correction and Rehabilitation-El Paso de Robles Youth Correctional Facility

This advocates efforts ensured that PASO exceeded SB/DVBE mandates. The facility achieved 8.24% DVBE and 32.59% SB participation. This was possible by establishing the following best practices:

• Ensured all requests for purchases utilized a bid from a small business or disabled veteran business enterprise.
• Awarded contracts for services to SB and/or DVBE
• Utilized statewide contracts that were awarded to SB/DVBE

Agency Secretary Leadership Award Department of Housing and Community Development
Accepting the award is Dennis L. Montgomery

This is a new award presented for the first time in 2007, which honors outstanding achievement with regard to Small Business and DVBE participation that has made a substantial impact to the state of California Small Business participation goals

The increase in Fiscal Year 2007-2008 was possible as the result of the department taking advantage of the partnership of Office Depot and DVBE Tech. This department purchased almost $300,000 in small office supplies from DVBE Tech which was almost one-half of the $700,000 DVBE purchases. The second contributing factor was our Information Technology purchases also benefited from the partnership of Western Blue Corp/Hp/Insight Public Sector with Disabled Veterans Business Enterprise and Small Business. This department increased the Disabled Veterans Business Enterprise by 5 fold from 3.15% in Fiscal Year 2005-2006 to 15.16% in Fiscal Year 2007-2008.

Department of Corrections- Preston
Youth Correctional Facility
Accepting the award is Kathy Randall

This prestigious award is presented to the department that epitomizes a superior standard for all state departments to model.

Kathy Randall has proven to be dedicated and committed to the success of her Small Business (SB) and Disabled Veterans Business Enterprise (DVBE) program since 2001. Her invaluable efforts were instrumental to the ongoing success of the SB/DVBE participation levels at this facility. She consistently maintained best practices, and consistently improved with each fiscal year. Her combination of leadership, emphasis on team atmosphere, and basic approach of insisting that every quote or solicitation include SB/DVBE participation was instrumental to the sites success. The facility is a leader amongst other Institutions, by consistently meeting participation goals from 2001 through 2008. The key strategy used was building a solid team among valued office staff and actively monitoring SB/DVBE levels. Education among staff and consistent communication helped support the SB/DVBE goals.

Small Business and DVBE Leadership Award-Presented by the California Small Business Association and the California Disabled Veteran Business Alliance to Liz Santucci- Department of Transportation - Caltrans District 9

Liz Santucci thought outside the box by using the media and technology. This method gave Small Business Liaisons the potential to reach further than their line of sight. The use of advertising, such as radio spots, newspaper ads and TV promos increased the information threshold. In addition, by advertising in the media, districts reduced their expenditures on gas, hotels, meals and tolls. It was cost effective for the employee to be working rather than spending time in transit. In three months time, with the use of radio spots, 80 requests were received requesting to become certified.

• Environmental Protection Agency- SB/Small
  Accepting the award is Colleen Rubens

• Gambling Control Commission- SB/Medium
  Accepting the award is Lisa King

• Department of Industrial Relations SB/Large
  Accepting the award is Karen Wong

• Office of Real Estate Appraisers - DVBE/Small
  Accepting the award is Bob Clark

• California Tahoe Conservancy- DVBE/Medium

• Department of Social Services- DVBE/Large
  Accepting the award is Peter Lopez