Lawrence is home to the Small Business Administration’s national Minority Small Business Person of the Year.

Connie Cook, CEO of Lawrence-based Environmental Management Resources Inc., recently was honored as the top minority business owner at a White House ceremony.

Cook was chosen from 11 finalists and traveled Sept. 24-27 to Washington, D.C., to receive the award and meet with Secretary of State Colin Powell, Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill and Secretary of Commerce Don Evans.

“It was an unbelievable honor,” Cook said. “We work really hard and we don’t work hard to win an award like this, but it still feels awfully nice.”

Cook believes it’s the hard work of the company’s 100 employees, 30 of whom work at the company’s headquarters at 1310 Wakarusa Drive, that led to her honor.

Growing company

Even during a time of national economic slowdown, the company has been able to grow its revenues by about 20 percent per year. This year, Cook estimates, the company will generate about $11 million in sales.

“I learned that only about 3 percent of all minority-owned businesses do more than $1 million a year in business,” Cook said. “We’ll do about $11 million, so that puts us in a pretty special category.”

The company generates revenue through a variety of environmental consulting and planning services. Cook estimates that about one-third of the company’s sales come from creating and overseeing plans for companies to deal with asbestos, lead and other hazardous materials. The remainder of the company’s business comes from cleaning up contaminated soil and groundwater, and evaluating sites for potential environmental problems.

Cook said she thought she received the SBA award, in part, because the company recently had begun offering its services on a more national scale. The company for several years has had high-profile environmental consulting contracts with the nation’s largest railroads, including Union Pacific and Burlington Northern Santa Fe, but just recently began working with several federal agencies.

Homeland security work

Connie Cook, CEO of Environmental Management Resources, recently was named the Small Business Administration's national Minority Small Business Person of the Year. EMR is located at 1310 Wakarusa Drive.

This week the company received its first contract from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers as part of a new national homeland security program. EMR was hired to design and administer a security program to protect an Oklahoma dam that the government has identified as one of 100 water dams in the country in need of greater protection.

Cook said she thought the government’s response to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks probably would further boost her company’s business in the future. Cook estimates that new business related to 9-11 concerns has added about 5 percent to the company’s revenues in 2002.

She said government agencies and private companies were turning to EMR because the company already had experience in dealing with hazardous chemicals. The company for years has been developing plans for railroads that often haul hazardous cargo. For example, EMR recently responded to a nonterrorist anthrax-related event at a Nebraska railyard.

“We’re expecting to have a record-setting year,” Cook said of the company’s revenues. “We’ve been getting lots of calls because the trucking industry thinks they’re the next to be hit, the railroads think they’re the next to be hit, agriculture thinks its the next to be hit. But I’m glad they’re all thinking that way because it makes it more likely they’ll be prepared.”

Finding Lawrence

The company moved to Lawrence from Seattle in 1989, after Cook and her husband and business partner, Mike, decided the company needed to be located in the Midwest to be closer to its railroad clients.

The Nebraska natives chose Lawrence after traveling through the town on their way from Kansas City to Denver.

“We started to look around and said, ‘This is a really nice town,'” Cook said. “We thought it would be a nice place to raise our children.”

So the couple on a whim went to Coldwell Banker/McGrew Real Estate and ended up talking with agent Mary Ellen Comeau.

“We told her that she had an hour to convince us that Lawrence is the place we ought to live, and darned if she didn’t,” Cook said.

Cook qualified for the minority award for being a woman and for being part Cherokee. She said she thought it was important the government make a special effort to honor minority-owned businesses.

“Demographics-wise by 2050, the minorities will be the majority,” Cook said. “We need to promote minority businesses because it’s been proven that having a healthy capitalistic system in a democracy is the best way to protect our freedom.

“It’s important that our businesses represent the way our country looks demographically.”