IA Executives Win State Award from SBA

< Photo: Interactive Achievement's John Hagmaier with Chamber's Joyce Waugh at Chamber awards.

Roanoke-based Interactive Achievement, which builds software used in Virginia school systems to assess students’ Standards of Learning progress, has been honored by the U.S. Small Business Administration’s (SBA) Richmond District Office. It has chosen four executives at the company as Small Business Persons of the Year for the Commonwealth of Virginia.

“SBA’s Small Business Week awards are among the most prestigious awards in the nation recognizing small business success,” says Jayne Armstrong, District Director for the SBA. “The SBA is honored to recognize a small business like Interactive Achievement for its many contributions to Virginia’s economy.” (FRONT editor Dan Smith was named Small Business Journalist of the Year by the SBA in 2005.)

Jonathan L. Hagmaier, C.E.O.; Mary V. Hagmaier, Director of Corporate Relations; Matthew Muller, Solutions Architect, and Jacob E. Gibson, VP of Business Development will be among the nine people receiving awards May 18. As the winner of the state award, Interactive Achievement will represent Virginia in the 2012 National Small Business Person of the Year competition.

“This is truly an honor for Interactive Achievement,” said Jonathan Hagmaier. “We had a vision that teachers should be able to access data immediately so they could make adjustments to improve the learning experience for their students. Here we are six years later and thousands of teachers are using our solution to help students. This award validates the tireless efforts of our entire team.”

This award follows quickly on the heels of regional recognition by the Roanoke Regional Chamber of Commerce and Roanoke Regional Small Business Development Center, which named Interactive Achievement the 2011 Small Business of the Year.