-
Kissimmee’s Lizbeth Walker (second from left) with her Qwalifize, LLC staff, was named Small Business Administration’s South Florida district Woman Business Owner of the Year. PHOTO/DAVID CHIVERS
Lizbeth Walker, CEO and owner of Qwalifize, LLC was recently named the Small Business Administration’s South Florida district Woman Business Owner of the Year during its 2024 Small Business Award Luncheon, as part of the National Small Business Week. The award is also presented through the Florida Small Business Development Center (SBC) at the University of Central Florida, which has a local presence.
“After I found out I won, of course I cried and squealed and all those things,” said Walker. “But it made me think about wow, this is so many people who kind of like fought for me. It just made me feel really proud of my city (Kissimmee) and where the business is now, because these are the folks, my village, my tribe, that helped me get to this point.”
“It is a privilege to be able to honor these amazing small business owners,” said Eunice Choi, Regional Director of the Florida SBDC at UCF.
Qwalifize is an employment staffing firm and government contractor specializing in tech, human resources and administration roles, providing temporary staffing, permanent staffing, and contract to hire for businesses. It also performs human resource consulting along with job seeker education and asset management.
The five-person downtown Kissimmee office oversees nearly 70 employees located directly with government and commercial client sites throughout the state. They include tax accountants, nursing and medical staff, civil engineers, roadway construction project managers and other various roles. Qwalifize acts as the employer for purposes of human resources, even as those employees actually work for their business client.
“We have two different types of customers: job seekers and employers,” Walker explained. “But when we say clients, we mean specifically only other employers.” Qwalifize then works to match job seekers with employers, then manages those employees in their new role for the client.
Walker is originally from Puerto Rico, but her parents were both in the Army and she moved every two to three years, including several years in Europe, before eventually graduating from Clearwater High School.
She moved to the Kissimmee area about 11 years ago.
After working in other staffing companies for over a decade she opened her own firm six years ago, starting off as a home business.
After about eight months she’d grown into an incubator space located in Kissimmee through UCF. She was able to hire her first in-house employee within a few months of the move. The business remained in the incubator program for about four years before moving to its present location on North Stewart Street in January 2023.
“We will be staying in Kissimmee because that’s where my heart’s at,” she said, noting that she’s happy to be here. “That’s where we got some of our largest and biggest opportunities. We want to stay connected with the community here.”
During National Small Business Week, the U.S. Small Business Administration highlights the impact of outstanding entrepreneurs, small business owners and others from all 50 states and U.S. territories.
