DENVER — Andrew Cousin, chief executive of Circle Graphics Inc., in Longmont, and Walter Knapp, chief executive of Sovrn Holdings Inc., in Boulder, have received regional Entrepreneur of the Year awards from Ernst & Young.

The CEOs were two of eight entrepreneurs who won in E&Y’s Mountain Desert region that includes Colorado, Arizona and New Mexico.

Cousin won in the Products & Manufacturing category. Circle Graphics produces large-format digital graphics for outdoor advertising, business signs, wall decor and art reproduction. With its headquarters in Longmont, the company operates in a combined 407,000 square feet of space in manufacturing plants across the United States. Its prepress department processes more than 20,000 files per day, with the aid of proprietary software automation tools. It prints more than 431 million square feet of material annually.

Knapp won in the Media category. Sovrn Holdings Inc. is an online technology firm based in Boulder with offices in Denver, New York and London. It provides tools that help online publishers present their content and media buyers reach readers of more than 80,000 websites worldwide. Sovrn’s platform is a stock exchange of sorts. The company works with online publishers — newspapers, magazines, bloggers, etc. — to sell their unsold advertising inventory to major ad agencies that purchase the ad spaces through real-time auctions run by Sovrn.

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Regional award winners are eligible for the Entrepreneur Of The Year National program.  Award winners in several national categories, as well as the Entrepreneur Of The Year Overall National Award winner, will be announced in Palm Springs, Calif.,  Nov. 18.

Winners for the Mountain Desert region were selected by an independent judging panel made up of previous award winners, leading CEOs, investors and other regional business leaders. The winners were unveiled Thursday evening, June 22,  at the Denver Center for the Performing Arts.

Other winners in the Mountain Desert region are:

Health care: Rebecca Shanahan, CEO, Avella Specialty Pharmacy, Phoenix.

Emerging:  Lindsey Laurain, founder, ezpz, Castle Rock.

Restaurant: Robert Thompson, founder/CEO, Punch Bowl Social, Denver.

Family Business: Rick L. Kinning, president/CEO/chairman,RK Mechanical Inc. —  Denver.

Technology: Sameer Dholakia, CEO, SendGrid, Denver.

Hospitality: Elia Wallen, CEO/founder, Travelers Haven & Hotel Engine, Denver.