El Paso logistics firm owner gets SBA's top award

El Paso SBA award winners

The U.S. Small Business Administration's El Paso office will give seven El Paso business operators and business advocates the agency's top El Paso business awards for 2017 at a May 4 luncheon:

Small Business Person of the Year: David Granado, a retired U.S. Army officer and owner of DA Defense Logistics HQ. He also is runner-up for the SBA's Texas Small Business Person of the Year award. Granado started his company in 2009, and has 461 employees, according to the SBA. The company provides logistics support services to the U.S. military and other federal, state and local government agencies in several states, according to its website. It ranked No. 218 on Inc. magazine's 2016 ranking of the 5,000 fastest-growing private companies in the United States. The company had sales of $19.2 million in 2015, Inc. reported.

Young Entrepreneur of the Year: Jonathan Childress, 27, co-owner of Proper Printshop Production. His shop, at 800 Montana, which started in 2011, prints shirts, posters, fine art and other items. Last year, the shop started Art en Vivo, a weekly printing event featuring poster printing by various artists. The event featured 52 El Paso and Juárez artists last year, the SBA reported. Childress started the print shop with his roommate in an apartment while he was attending the University of Texas at El Paso. He has a degree in accounting and finance and a Master of Business Administration degree from UTEP.

Small Business Exporter of the Year: Jose Ochoa and Luis Galvan, owners of Global Containers & Custom Packaging.

Small Business Champions: Yaisa Hallback, Teachers Federal Credit Union, financial champion; Homero Galicia, owner of Ascend: Entrepreneurial Growth, a business coaching firm, minority champion; Cristina Bringas, Wells Fargo Bank, women's champion; and state Rep. César Blanco, D-El Paso, military veterans' champion.

The SBA awards luncheon is May 4, 11 a.m.-1 p.m., at the El Paso Airport Wyndham Hotel at 2027 Airway. Tickets: $35 per person at the door or by ordering at 629-6714.

Del Sol Medical Center 

Annie Garcia is the new chief nursing officer at Del Sol Medical Center in East El Paso. She begins her new job June 5.

Garcia has been chief nursing officer at Methodist Texsan Hospital in San Antonio for the past three years.

Before that, she worked about 10 years at Del Sol in several nursing roles. She has a nursing degree from New Mexico State University and a master's degree in nursing systems management from the University of Texas at El Paso.

Las Palmas Del Sol  

Bryan Baca, a nurse practitioner, is the sole patient-care provider at the new Las Palmas Del Sol Urgent Care center at 10640 Gateway North and Kenworthy, Suite B, in Northeast El Paso. It's open weekdays from 9 a.m.-6 p.m.

Baca moved to El Paso in 1998 after getting a nursing degree from New Mexico State University. He also has a master's degree in nursing from Chamberlain College of Nursing in Illinois.

The urgent care center is part of Las Palmas Del Sol Healthcare, which is operated by HCA, a national hospital chain.

UTEP fellow  

Sergio Cordova, a mechanical engineering graduate student at the University of Texas at El Paso, is part of the NASA 2017 class of Space Technology Research Fellows. The award is the most competitive fellowship NASA offers and has an estimated annual value of $74,000 and can be renewed for up to three additional years. He's the first UTEP student to get the NASA award. Cordova is getting a master's degree in May and will start his doctoral work, supported by this fellowship, in UTEP’s Department of Mechanical Engineering this fall.

UTEP songwriter 

Larry Lesser, a math professor at UTEP, has won again in national song contests sponsored by the National Museum of Mathematics and by the Consortium for the Advancement of Undergraduate Statistics Education. Lesser will perform his winning songs in April at the museum: “Statistician’s BLUEs,” a pun-filled breakup song, and “Mean,” a Taylor Swift parody about why the mean is not a good summary of highly skewed data. In the consortium's contest, he won first place for “Losing Cause,” a song illustrating how correlation need not imply causation, and second place for “Question the Questions,” a song illustrating pitfalls in writing survey questions.

GECU 

GECU, El Paso's largest credit union, celebrated the grand opening April 26 of a student-run branch inside the Student Services Center at El Paso Community College's Valle Verde Campus at 919 Hunter in East El Paso. The branch is open to students, faculty and the general public. The GECU branch provides EPCC students work experience in the financial industry while also providing a community service, Myshie Pagel, instructional dean of Education and Career and Technology Education at the college, said in a statement.

Workforce Solutions Borderplex

Bobby Blanco has been appointed to the Workforce Solutions Borderplex board of directors. He will represent the private sector for the public employment agency's board. Blanco is a partner and director of insurance and estate planning for Strategic Wealth Advisors in El Paso.