At the LBDC, we have an immense pool of talented consultants who contribute to the success of our clients and provide valuable insight as they work on their businesses. Every year they go above and beyond and in light of the challenging year that was 2020, we had more recognition that needed to happen than in other years. Without further ado, let’s shine a well-deserved spotlight on some of those who made an immense difference for us last year!

Consultants of the Year

(Yes, we couldn’t just pick one!)

Franklin Taggart

Over the years he has been consulting with the LBDC Franklin has met with literally hundreds of clients, helping them with startup concerns, unique challenges faced by creative industry businesses, and dialing in their marketing ti understand it at a deeper level. Beyond that, he’s developed many courses for the LBDC and our Larimer SBDC partner, helping us stay responsive to the rapidly changing marketing landscape. In 2020, he went above and beyond to help us make workshops available online given our in-person constraints, along with continued consulting support for our clients. Thank you for all you’ve done and your passion for helping our Loveland businesses Franklin!

Tiffany Helton

Outside of being an owner at Stuft Burger Bar and the Lonesome Buck in Fort Collins, Tiffany makes time to consult with emerging restaurant and food business owners through consulting at the Larimer SBDC and LBDC. Her been-there, done-that approach to help clients avoid common pitfalls that are unique to restaurant ownership, a talent she has used to develop the Online Restaurant Academy. In 2020, the Online Restaurant Academy had a goal to help restaurants navigate the difficulties of COVID and we are excited to see what this new industry resource will provide the community in the future!

Community Partner of the Year

The economic development structure in Northern Colorado is beyond compare and we are thankful for all of our community partners, but some are truly a step above.

Allison Seabeck – The Warehouse

Along with being the director of the Warehouse Business Accelerator, working with stage 2 businesses to help them achieve their goals, Allison is an amazing community partner. She is regularly involved in discussions around economic response and recovery, was instrumental in establishing the CSU/Larimer County Pivot Program for business assistance and was a crucial part of the Funding Resource team that helped businesses navigate through the intricacies of PPP, EIDL and other financial resources.

Special Recognition Award

Ben McConnell

With the rollout of so many different types of business aid at the beginning of the pandemic, information was rolling out at a breakneck pace. To help sort through the information we created a Funding Resource Team – about a dozen consultants who met weekly to learn about the best tools available to help our clients and how to access them. A great team isn’t much without a leader though, and Ben stepped up in a huge way to help organize and distill the information into the most important pieces. This was an intense job that was created out of pure necessity, and we cannot thank Ben enough for the countless hours he put into communicating this information. Without his contributions, our internal team and clients would have potentially missed vital resources to keep their businesses afloat in challenging times.

Thank you to all our consultants who contribute their time and knowledge to our clients through one-on-one consulting and the development of new classes for the LBDC! We appreciate all you do to strengthen the resources available to our business community!