NSBW 2025: How 2 award-winning small business CEOs made a big impact

Despite living more than 3,000 miles apart, Vistage members Christine Hopkins and Jake Oakland lead remarkably similar lives.

Both succeeded longtime CEOs of companies with rich histories and strong community ties. In a time of economic uncertainty, they focused on enhancing company culture.

Their efforts have not gone unnoticed, as both were honored as 2025 winners of the prestigious Small Business Person of the Year (SBA) awards presented by the U.S. Small Business Administration. The SBA awards recognize outstanding small business owners from across the nation. They celebrated alongside other national winners at a special ceremony on May 5 in Washington, D.C.

Meet our Vistage members who fuel prosperity, growth and opportunities in communities across our country and proudly represent the spirit of the SBA awards. 

Christine Hopkins | Anchorage, Alaska

President, CEO and Managing Owner, ASCI Family of Companies
2025 SBA Award Winner, Alaska
Vistage Member since 2021

When the problems got big, Christine Hopkins had the ingenious idea of going small.

It was 2020, and supply chain and asset management consulting and services company ASCI was reeling from the death of its former CEO and the pending loss of major contracts. And then the pandemic hit.

Hopkins found herself one of 11 owners of a 250-employee company teetering on the brink.

“Every one of our contracts was in jeopardy,” she says. “I needed access to PPP loans, SBA funding, whatever programs I could access, and I wanted to enter federal contracting, which I couldn’t do competitively with our structure at the time.”

Hopkins talked the other owners into cashing out, turning a 21-year-old flailing conglomerate into a sharp, lean small business with a fighting chance. The visionary move allowed ASCI to qualify as a U.S. Small Business and a Woman-Owned Business, which opened up avenues of support and revenue that would otherwise have been out of reach.

It also left Hopkins at the helm without much support. She reached out to Vistage Chair Rick Wolk, Ph.D., an acquaintance of her husband’s, and joined one of his groups, which had recently shifted to Zoom.

“It was one of the best decisions I made in that period,” she says, “I honestly think if I hadn’t had the Vistage group, we probably would have gone under because I wouldn’t have had the support to carry me through some of those super dark times.”

After a harrowing few years and great personal investment — “401Ks, loans, life insurance, we dumped into the company everything we could,” she says — ASCI is now synonymous with Alaska’s small business ecosystem: employment opportunities for U.S. veterans and military families and sustainable economic growth.

Hopkins says the 2025 SBA awards’ recognition is a testament to the team’s resilience and her unwavering commitment to her employees and the people she serves.

“I could have walked away with everyone else,” she says of her decision to pivot into a small business. “The reason we didn’t was to protect the jobs of the team we had left and to ensure a sustainable career path for them. I didn’t want them out there trying to find jobs in the middle of COVID.”

While ASCI ended 2024 at around 10% net profitability, most of that was spent paying off loans. Hopkins says she is intentionally keeping profitability lower this year, as she is spending time growing her core administrative team and preparing for greater scalability.

Going small to get big? It’s an ingenious idea that has worked before for this SBA winner.

Hopkins’s Hard-Earned Wisdom

1. Hire veterans. It can be challenging to understand the depth and scope of military service when presented on a resume, but veterans are an overlooked asset to every company. Train your internal HR resources to look for ways to use veterans’ experience to benefit the company. About 65% of ASCI is military-affiliated.
2. Prioritize transparency. During periods of hardship, be humble as a leader and share those challenges with your team. That emotional transparency during hard times carries through to the good times, because they know you’re right there with them.
3. Keep your culture at the forefront. Corporate culture needs to be created from the top down. Get to know your employees, take the time to visit them, and make a connection so they know there’s a person they can go to if they need to. This also helps ensure that you have buy-in between the people creating the programs and those who are expected to operationalize them. 

Jake Oakland | Perry, Iowa

President and CEO, Percival Scientific
2025 SBA Award Winner, Iowa
Vistage Member since 2023

It’s not that Jake Oakland isn’t grateful to be named an SBA award recipient. It’s just that he finds it a bit odd.

“We found the award strange because it is not given to the company. In reality, there should be 85 names on the award, not just three,” says Oakland, who was named Iowa’s award winner along with Percival Scientific vice presidents Jamie Jackson (sales) and Joni Campidilli (marketing and communications). “That’s the essence of our company. We really have a team culture here.”

And that team is tight-knit. So much so that joining a 137-year-old institution, whose last CEO retired after half a century, could have been a bit daunting for Oakland, a first-time CEO.

But there’s a secret to small businesses like Percival, which started selling butcher tools and now designs and engineers custom research environment growth chambers for universities, government and private labs in all 50 states and 79 countries. That secret? Having the agility and creativity to set people up for success.

“They took a little bit of a risk on me being a new CEO and not having the experience. They said, ‘Hey, we want to support you joining a peer group,’ and the recruiter recommended me to Vistage,” Oakland says. “Vistage is my favorite professional group of all time.”

Oakland credits Vistage with helping him navigate his team through a 2X facility expansion and workforce increase that had been underway before he arrived. The mentorship of Vistage Chair Steve Lacy, in particular, gave Oakland the tools to help focus Percival’s forward momentum.

In Oakland’s first full year of leadership, Percival grew revenue 43%, reduced delivery time by 30% and did not see a single workplace injury (a record still going strong as of this writing).

“Our recent focus has been on establishing our core values, purpose and niche, setting the stage for Percival’s future growth,” he says. “And we’re expanding our field sales team to grow existing customer segments and identify new markets that align with our purpose to help research professionals worldwide create better science with customizable controlled environment chambers.”

Percival is now investing in research and development and looking at ways to pivot to meet the moment of today’s uncertain global market. However, change is nothing new for the company, and the unusual is nothing new for Oakland.

“I love the challenges,” he says. “I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t relish them.”

Oakland’s Tips for Excellence

1. Focus on people. Recognize that people make companies great. Prioritize team culture, inclusivity and building strong relationships.
2. Embrace adaptability. Be willing to learn, innovate and pivot in response to changing business environments. Stay nimble without overcommitting or over-correcting.
3. Improve continuously. Constantly seek ways to improve processes, seek out personal/professional growth opportunities and maintain high standards of quality and safety.

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