Steve Dixel, right, SBA Eastern Pennsylvania director presents the 2024 Entrepreneurial Success of the Year Award to J. Nicole Martin Lawton, president and CEO of Phoenix Language Services of Whitpain Township during a ceremony on Thursday, May 9. Lawton’s company was chosen to receive the award from nominees from across 40 Pennsylvania counties. (Credit: SBA Eastern Pennsylvania District)
Representatives from the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) Eastern Pennsylvania District paid a visit to Phoenix Language Services Inc. in Whitpain Township last week to present the company with the Eastern Pennsylvania Entrepreneurial Success of the Year Award for 2024.
Steve Dixel, SBA Eastern Pennsylvania director, presented the award to J. Nicole Martin Lawton, president and CEO of Phoenix Language Services, at an event attended by employees, family, friends and a representative from the office of U.S. Rep. Madeline Dean (D-4th Dist.).
In April, the company was named as one of seven 2024 Small Business Week Award winners for the Eastern Pennsylvania District Office. The Entrepreneurial Success of the Year award winner is selected each year from among nominees located across the 40 counties of eastern Pennsylvania.
Phoenix Language Services provides comprehensive language access services — including interpreters and translators — for limited-English proficient and deaf and hard of hearing clients and patient populations, in a variety of settings including healthcare, legal, educational, corporate, social services and the government.
Founded in 1993 by Lawton’s father Bill Martin, the business is in its second generation of leadership under Lawton.
Until March 2020, Phoenix had been experiencing substantial growth in revenue. The COVID-19 pandemic impacted the company as clients restricted the use of onsite language access services. Those onsite services represented a “considerable amount of its revenue,” according to a press release.
Lawton and her team found the SBA’s Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) and COVID EIDL pandemic programs to be invaluable over the past three years, the release stated. They also received counseling from SBA’s resource partners, including SCORE, Temple University Small Business Development Center, and Women’s Business Enterprise Center East.
“It’s a privilege to recognize the achievements of second-generation, minority- and women-owned businesses and entrepreneurs such as J. Nicole Martin Lawton,” Dixel said in a statement. “We are proud our SBA pandemic programs helped sustain the business and the counseling offered by our SBA Resource Partners enabled the business to emerge stronger and profitable.”
Under Lawton’s direction, Phoenix became SBA-certified as a Women-Owned Small Business in 2020 and Women’s Business Enterprise National Council certified through the resources of her local Women’s Business Center, Women’s Business Enterprise Center East (WBEC-East).
“Phoenix’s mission from day one has been to help people who prefer to communicate in a language other than English to be able to do so, in whatever setting they are in,” Lawton said in a statement. “We thank the SBA for helping us through the pandemic by supplementing the operational costs associated with providing our essential language access services. In addition, the ongoing counseling we receive from SBA’s resource partners is priceless.”
In accepting the award on Thursday, Lawton thanked the Phoenix team for believing in her as they believed in her father, and who also believe in the “power and importance of helping people to be able to communicate, often in some of the most vulnerable and integral times of their lives.”
She also thanked her father, who passed away in May 2020.
“I am truly honored to carry on my dad’s legacy, to embody his passion, his drive, and as he would say the ‘fire in the belly,’ to help those who can’t communicate for themselves without the support of language access services we’ve been privileged to provide for over 30 years,” Lawton said, adding that it was her non-English speaking grandmother and others like her, “who inspired my father and who until this day continue to inspire me.”
Phoenix Language Services Inc. was nominated for the award by Eliot Gilkeson, program coordinator, Women’s Business Enterprise Center East.
“Nicole has utilized the resources and extensive support networks available through WBEC-East, the SBA, SCORE, and Temple University SBDC,” Gilkeson said in a statement. “Through her engagement with these organizations, Nicole continues to foster the growth of Phoenix Language Services.”
The Women’s Business Enterprise Center East is a resource partner of the SBA, and offers services to help businesses start with training, counseling, and networking programs and services, such as entrepreneurial training and a business finance program.
During National Small Business Week — April 28-May 4 this year — the U.S. Small Business Administration recognizes and awards outstanding entrepreneurs, small business owners, and others from around the country. Recognition and educational events are held throughout the month of May.
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