More Business Columnists

• Stacy Sacco: Savor 'Cheese' book's lessons on tackling change
• Randy Burge: Locally grown foods grow in popularity
• Stacy Sacco: Want to develop a situation card?

MOST RECENT TRIB STORIES

• ABQTrib.com to remain available
  08:48 a.m., February 25, 2008
• Congressman is indicted
  08:37 a.m., February 23, 2008
• Series of attacks target Green Zone
  08:36 a.m., February 23, 2008
• Iran is defying U.N., agency says
  08:35 a.m., February 23, 2008
• Waterboarding approval probed
  08:34 a.m., February 23, 2008

TRIB IN THE BLOGOSPHERE*

• Ty Murray Invitational thrills fans in Albuquerque
• Is Rome Burning?
• Ominous Skies
• The Road to Invalidation
• Albuquerque company participates in “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition”

*Note: The Tribune does not create and is not responsible for the blogosphere's headlines and stories. These links to blogs talking about ABQTrib.com are automatically generated. Use them at your own risk.

STORY TOOLS

• E-mail story
• Comments
• iPod friendly
• Printer friendly

SHARE THIS STORY [?]

Belinda Padilla is one of the intrepid employees of Los Alamos National Laboratory who commutes the 100-plus miles one way from her home in Albuquerque. Not every day - she has a place to stay in Los Alamos - but she makes the trek a time or two every week.

Bee, as her friends know her, also goes great distances in other ways positive for the lab's community impact and New Mexico's economic development through her visionary and practical works. She is the manager of the Entrepreneurship and Regional Opportunities program in the Los Alamos Tech Transfer division.

I caught up with Padilla at a recent gathering of technology associations in Albuquerque. Her colleague, Mariann Johnston, joined her and two interns from Bee's summer Master of Business Administration internship program, Renee Barnett from the Harvard Business School and Jarrett Hines, an Albuquerquean who attends the Eller College of Management at the University of Arizona.

Frankly, I was amid quiet greatness. During these chaotic and challenging times for Los Alamos National Laboratory, homegrown leaders like Padilla and Johnston often go unmentioned and unnoticed in the public eye. This dynamic duo deserves banner headlines for the significant impacts they have made over the years on the New Mexico economy.

You can meet Padilla and Johnston on July 19, at the Coronado Ventures Forum's Albuquerque meeting from 6 to 8 p.m. at UNM's Digital ARTS Lab, 31 Pine St. N.E., on the northwest corner of University Boulevard and Central Avenue.

Bo Peabody, co-founder of Village Ventures and founder of Tripod, one of the first social networks on the Internet, will talk about entrepreneurship in digital media. Register early for the event online at cvf-nm.org/events.

Padilla is the chairwoman of the CVF board of directors. I am a past board chair of CVF and can attest to the new heights that Padilla has taken the organization, including having our first meetings in Albuquerque. Our last meeting earlier this year at Advent Solar was standing room only.

Padilla and Johnston get it - progressive change means exchange - the powers of combinatorial networks. Both of them have stoked beneficial new business possibilities and connections in the region through programs each has helped build and maintain in our two national labs.

Padilla's program provides a range of practical entrepreneurial and tech transfer services to hundreds of small businesses and startups in New Mexico. Among her programs, the summer MBA internship program she started stands out.

The internship program has been in place for a number of years, bringing more than 100 entrepreneurial MBA students to LANL from around the country and New Mexico. The interns are assigned to work with technology-oriented businesses on business planning and possible tech transfer opportunities.

New Mexico often exports its entrepreneurial people, ideas, and companies. The internship program turns that trend on its ear, recruiting young talent to come to New Mexico and check us out for the express purpose of entrepreneurship.

All growing tech regions attract such talent naturally. Patrick Sullivan, one of the MBA interns from the University of Texas-Dallas, returned after graduating along with his new wife, Erica, from San Diego State, whom he met in 2002 as one of his fellow interns. Patrick now runs the UNM-Los Alamos Small Business Development Center.

Johnston co-founded the New Mexico Small Business Assistance Program when she worked at Sandia. She has started up a similar program at Los Alamos in the past year. The SBAP is the only way the technology genius behind the fences at the national labs can be accessed directly by small businesses to help solve pressing technical challenges. Hundreds of businesses have taken advantage of this innovative program, enabled by the New Mexico Legislature.

Bridging the hyper-scientific cultures at the national labs with the mainstream entrepreneurial community is challenging. Padilla and Johnston make it happen every day.