Small business had its day in Congress. And ICSB helped make it happen.

This month, U.S. Representative Hakeem Jeffries issued a Congressional Proclamation formally recognizing the International Council for Small Business (ICSB), honoring the organization's dedicated service and achievements, and recognizing the 2026 ICSB World Congress and our historic Day at the United States Congress.

I have read it several times now. It still feels remarkable.

Seventy Years in the Making

ICSB was founded in 1955 with a simple conviction: that the people who start and run small businesses deserve a seat at the table where knowledge is created, and policy is shaped.

For more than seventy years, our members have carried that conviction across borders through research, teaching, policy, and championing.

Recognition like this does not arrive overnight. It is built by every scholar who published research that changed how we understand entrepreneurship, every educator who taught a student to see opportunity where others saw risk, every policymaker who listened, and every entrepreneur who turned an idea into something real.

The proclamation carries one signature, but it honors thousands of hands.

Two Hats, One Story

I have the privilege of wearing two hats in this story: as President and CEO of ICSB and as a Teaching Professor of Management at the George Washington University School of Business, where ICSB has made its home since 2002.

This year, those two worlds came together completely.

The 71st ICSB World Congress convened at the George Washington University from June 29 to July 1, bringing business leaders, educators, researchers, students, policymakers, and entrepreneurs from around the world to Washington, D.C.

Then we did something ICSB had never done before.

We walked, together, into the halls of the United States Congress.

Our Day at Congress was more than a visit. It was a statement: the global small business community belongs in the rooms where decisions are made.

Delegates who had traveled from around the world stood in the seat of American democracy, representing the world's entrepreneurs and small businesses.

I will not forget it.

A Fitting Place

Something is fitting about all of this happening at a university that bears George Washington's name.

Washington understood commerce not simply as a narrow pursuit but as a force capable of shaping a nation's future. In 1784, he wrote:

"A people who are possessed of the spirit of commerce, who see and who will pursue their advantages, may achieve almost anything."

Those words were written before the Constitution existed and before the Congress that would one day issue this proclamation had taken shape.

More than two centuries later, at a university carrying Washington's name, in the capital city carrying his name, the United States Congress recognized a global community carrying that spirit of entrepreneurship forward every day.

This Belongs to All of Us

A proclamation names an organization, but it honors a community.

This recognition belongs to ICSB's members, board, and staff; to the faculty, students, staff, and leadership of the George Washington University School of Business; to our partners in governments and institutions around the world; and, above all, to the entrepreneurs whose work gives everything we do its meaning.

Seventy years ago, a small group of believers founded ICSB to give small business a voice.

This year, that voice was heard in the United States Congress.

What a way to open our next chapter.