Cynthia Nagura

Cynthia K. Nagura, director of Southwestern College’s Family Resource Center, is the SBA’s Home-Based Business Champion of the Year for 2008. Nagura established the Family Resource Center at the Higher Education Center campus in National City. She also directs the Microenterprise Family Childcare Program, which gives low- and middle-income residents the training they need to establish their own home-based child care businesses.

Nagura wrote the grant proposal that secured federal funds to establish the Microenterprise Family Childcare Program. "Not only did (graduates) have the ability to secure a better life for themselves and their families, but they also were capable of expanding their ideas and ensuring that their dreams for a secure financial future were possible," says Victor Castillo, director of the Southwestern College Small Business Development and International Trade Center.

Nagura, the product of immigrant parents from Japan, was the first generation in her family to attend college (she graduated from the University of Redlands with honors in interdisciplinary studies and Phi Beta Kappa), and joined Southwestern College in 2002 as director of international programs.

The Microenterprise Family Childcare Program was established in 2005 with $600,000 in federal funds. Since that time, 52 participants have applied for child care licenses; 17 are pending approval; and 35 have opened their home-based businesses.