Home Instead, Lynda Foster Big Winners

Small Business Advocate winner Lynda McNutt Foster (center) reacts to her win^

Betsy and Chris Head (center left) with employees of Home Instead lining up for photo after being declared the Small Business of the Year^

Chris and Betsy Head, who started Home Instead Senior Care just eight years ago, walked away with the majority of the hardware at tonight's Roanoke Regional Small Business Awards ceremony before more than 500 people at the Hotel Roanoke & Conference Center.

In addition to winning the overall award, Home Instead also won the Business-to Consumer Services category, one of the largest of the 12 categories (there were more than 100 nominated individuals and companies in all categories). The company has moved its Roanoke headquarters and expanded into Lynchburg during the past year, says Chris Head, presenting challenges--that it has met with considerable success.

The prestigious Small Business Advocate Award was presented to a stunned Lynda McNutt Foster, who had spent much of the early evening taping nominees for Webcast YouTube (here). Foster, who works for Wheeler Broadcasting, is a tireless educator and promoter of small business people. Her series of seminars almost always draw packed houses. (Among those taped for broadcast were Valley Business FRONT publisher Tom Field and editor Dan Smith, who were nominated for the Advocate Award, Smith for the fifth time. He has been called "the Susan Lucci of business advocacy.")

Other winners were:

• Small Business Veteran: Charles R. Allen Jr.
• Construction/Real Estate: Hughes Associates Architects.
• Micro-Business: Anstey Hodge Advertising Group.
• Wholesale-Retail: Burris Computer Forms.
• Manufacturing: M&W Fire Apparatus.
• Technology: Interactive Achievement Inc.
• Legacy: Blue Ridge Beverage Company.
• Not-for-Profit/Arts & Culture: Taubman Museum of Art.
• Not-for-Profit/Health & Human Services: Rescue Mission Ministries.