Orion Associates is honored as one of the five finalists for the Twin Cities Business Magazine’s “2012 Family Business Awards” on November 8, 2012. It is an award targeted at family owned and run companies and acknowledging the special challenges that come with it.
Twin Cities Business Magazine described Orion Associates in their November 2012 issue as follows:
”Orion was founded to provide administrative support to three associated companies that help people with developmental disabilities and related conditions; it now also provides services such as accounting, finance, and human resources functions to other social services organizations, including county governments. Since Rebecca Thomley, daughter of founders Orval and Marya Hage, became CEO in 2000, company revenues have grown tenfold.”
Family Values:“Marya and Orval Hage . . . founded an organization based on the socially conscious principles of service by which they lived their lives and upon which they had raised their family.” – Stephen Hage, Chief Administrative Officer.”
Twin Cities Business’s coverage of the Minnesota Family Business Awards takes a close look at how Minnesota companies are responding to the challenges and joys of building and maintaining a family-owned, family-run company. How do these businesses prepare the next generation for leadership? What roles do various family members play in the business? What values do these companies seek to impart to the family members, and how are those values expressed within their communities?
Running one’s business and being one’s own boss is a dream that is quintessentially American. Both presidential candidates have alluded to the importance of these types of small businesses as job creators and community pillars. But making that dream real, and then maintaining the business, requires many struggles. For businesses run not only by entrepreneurs but their families, the challenges aren’t solely operational-they’re interpersonal, often complicatedly so.