Consultant puts Iraqi entrepreneurs on course.

• Author: Wylie, Brooke
• Position: SMALL BUSINESS

Winter Park resident Susanne Jalbert is helping small business take root in a former dictatorship: barber shops, bakeries, clothing stores, restaurants and taxi services are a few Iraqi startups she's helped nurture.

On the ground full-time since January of 2006, Jalbert and her co-workers have opened 16 Small Business Development Centers in Iraq; they hope to have 22 centers up and running by mid- to late spring of next year.

Jalbert is the senior adviser of Business Development Services for Tijara (Arabic for "trade") with sponsorship from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). She initially came to Iraq with funding to open three centers but was able to open five.

Each Small Business Development Center is staffed by about 10 locals and helps hopeful entrepreneurs in the area to start their businesses.

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Jalbert, who operates an international business development practice and earned a Ph.D. from Colorado State University, spent her first few months in Iraq researching and giving seminars in an effort to understand the people and their business aspirations.

Given that Iraq was a dictatorship with a planned economy, "Our goal was to assist with the conversion to a free market and to identify community leaders," she said.

SBDCs focus on small to medium-sized businesses that are oriented to the community. Jalbert says she has seen ample headway.

"It's terribly important to know that there are good things happening in Iraq," she said. "There are lots of successful...