CIMBRA Inc.

Owning and operating a business is challenging. Doing so as someone who is underrepresented in business as well as their own industry ads even more hoops to jump through. For Miriam Rodriguez though, the challenges are worth struggling through to live everyday doing the work she loves.

Miriam is the owner of CIMBRA Inc, a Brighton-based construction business offering landscaping, environmental services, and land reclamation services. She will be coming up on her 5-year mark in business this summer and has made use of the SBDC consulting services and programming for the last several years. Miriam is a recent graduate of the Leading Edge program through the North Metro SBDC, where she was enthusiastically engaged each week and capitalized on the new information to take her business to the next level.

Through the help of the SBDC and connections made during the course, Miriam received her certifications as a Minority/Woman-owned Business Enterprise, Small Business Enterprise, Disadvantaged Business Enterprise, and Emerging Business Enterprise in October of 2023. Feeling equipped with the necessary information and resources, Miriam states, “I feel happy and I feel like finally I am getting to where I wanted to be.”

Miriam expressed the difficulties of being a female leader in the construction industry. Despite being extremely qualified, she is often overlooked due to longstanding discrimination in the industry. However, feeling equipped by all she has learned in the Leading Edge course, coupled with the weekly dose of encouragement, Miriam has a renewed outlook on the industry that she loves and is willing to work through the discrimination to live out her passion. Fueled by a new sense of confidence, Miriam says, “Information is power.”

Since completing the Leading Edge course, Miriam has continued to meet with SBDC consultants and has been collaborating with counselors through CDOT as well as the MBO office. The SBDC is proud to support the journey of businesses like CIMBRA Inc. and celebrates the success Miriam has already realized as well as the new opportunities coming her way in the future.

Nova Engineering

An affinity for science and its potential applications drove Manhar Karsanbhai to pursue his Bachelor of Science at Colorado University in electrical engineering. After spending several years gaining experience in semi-conducting, storage, and research and development with companies from Colorado to California, Manhar decided it was time for a change. “It’s a big leap going from corporate America to jumping in to business ownership,” he said. Nova Engineering was established in 1979 and Manhar took

JCS Cleaning Services

A strong online presence is crucial to a business’s success, especially in our ever-increasing digital world reliant on technology. For many business owners, the skills needed to create and manage a professional website are daunting and ultimately a barrier to their business’s growth. To address the gap in digital skills, especially among minority business owners, the North Metro SBDC started a website program led by Diego Leyes, Bilingual Digital Marketing Specialist and Spanish Programs Outreach Consultant. The selected client for the first round of the website program was Jorge Torres, owner of JCS Cleaning Services.

Mon Cheri Bakery & Bistro

Baking for Cheri Spickard owner of Mon Cheri started as a young child in her grandmother’s kitchen. Cheri loved spending time in Grandma’s kitchen making biscuits and cookies using Grandma’s method of a pinch of this and a bit of that. She did not learn about recipes until age 13 when working with her mother in her mother’s catering business. No one on her mother’s team liked to make deserts so Cheri took out the

Fiesta Time Inc.

Fiesta Time Inc. is a family business that started seven years ago in Brighton, Colorado. The Jurado family opened it services with only ten tables and seventy chairs, and since then has grown to be a driving force in the party rental industry. Fiesta Time is now much more than just tables and chairs, offering a whole repertoire of frame tents, pole tents, linens, dance floors, and sound systems. Having a strong foundation is essential

Key Results

Key Results is a small company with a long reach. For almost twenty years, Owner, Marge Fajardo, has worked with individual leaders globally and a variety of business groups from small local companies to large governmental agencies in Washington D.C. The ultimate goal of Key Results is to improve the interpersonal health of an organization and build on their people-power to produce better results. Prior to starting Key Results, Fajardo worked in business, government, and

Meno

Meno is positioned as a meeting place of meaningful sustainability and appealing design. Jerri describes her motivation saying, “My goal is to not only do things differently but to actually show the industry a fresh business model and approach that can be profitable, all while being transparent for the customers.”