By Javacia Harris Bowser | The Birmingham Times
Nathalie Nelson Parker first attended Birmingham Small Business Week events about four years ago when she and her husband relocated to the Magic City from Nashville.
She calls the time she spent connecting with other local small business owners a “defining moment” in her entrepreneurial journey. She asked herself, “Am I going to go back to a 9-to-5 or am I going to be a full-time entrepreneur?”
Meeting other business owners gave her the courage to strike out on her own.
“There are other people that I can do this work beside as they grow their businesses,” Parker said she realized. “What’s important is that you build next to the people who are in this work with you.”
Parker is such a fan of Birmingham Small Business Week that her company, Civitas Consulting Group, Inc., signed on to help organize this year’s lineup of events, which is set for May 3-9.
“We’re just so privileged to be a part of the growth that’s happening in Birmingham,” Parker said. But this is a privilege she feels prepared for.
“We’ve helped so many of our clients grow and scale and offer systems that help them to be able to do that sustainably, so being able to partner with the city in this way feels synergistic,” Parker said.
Just as her consulting firm has helped businesses level up, the City of Birmingham hopes to help other local entrepreneurs do the same through this year’s Small Business Week programming.
For more than 60 years, the U.S. Small Business Administration has celebrated National Small Business Week to recognize the contributions of entrepreneurs and small business owners. Birmingham Small Business Week 2026, which coincides with the national observance, is designed to connect local business owners to the resources, relationships, and opportunities needed to grow and scale.
Centered on the theme “Build Big: Elevate Your Vision. Empower Your Journey,” Birmingham Small Business Week will bring together entrepreneurs, nonprofit leaders, lenders, corporate partners, and ecosystem builders to help strengthen Birmingham’s small-business landscape.
Hosted by the City of Birmingham’s Department of Innovation and Economic Opportunity (IEO), the weeklong lineup features programming for entrepreneurs at every stage. In addition to workshops and networking events aimed at helping entrepreneurs scale their businesses, Small Business Week will also include wellness events, a full day of workshops for nonprofits, and much more.
Connectivity
While Parker and the city’s IEO team want Small Business Week to connect entrepreneurs to resources, they also want to foster relationships.
“I think that’s what makes Small Business Week really important,” Parker said. “It’s businesses from all industries, businesses at all different stages of growth and maturation, but there’s a connectivity. And I think the city is that connectivity.”
For Magan Battle of Battle Realty & Company being around other entrepreneurs who also “stepped out on faith” was a highlight of her experience at last year’s Small Business Week events.
“It was a visual representation of someone else who looks like me, another woman that looks like me, who also stepped out,” she said.
Battle also appreciated learning how to access funding and other resources to grow her business.
“When you didn’t grow up around other entrepreneurs, and you know, you’re figuring it out along the way,” she said. Events like Small Business Week make figuring things out a bit easier.
The full event schedule for Birmingham Small Business Week is available at ieo.birminghamal.gov/bhmup.
