February 21, 2011

The mission of the Greater New England Minority Supplier Development Council is to significantly increase business relationships between our corporate members and our certified MBEs. We believe that minority business development is a key component of reducing poverty, unemployment, increasing wealth, and integrating American society. You are receiving this email in order to keep you abreast of developments with the Greater New England Minority Supplier Development Council, Supplier Diversity Issues and Minority Business Development. If you like what you read please share internally and externally. Capital and Minority Business Capacity Summit - March 3 MBEs and Corporations Coming from Around the U.S. to Capital Summit at Federal Reserve Bank of Boston We are getting great responses from MBEs and corporate members from around the country for the "Capital and Minority Business Capacity Building Summit". We are also happy to announce that because of the generous support of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston the event is FREE! If you are interested in attending this high powered meeting of leaders from business, politics, policy and the media, call the office to reserve your seat. Because of space constraints we are limiting attendance to two persons per company. Click here to see the preliminaryprogram book for the event which includes a list of the 2011 GNEMSDC Annual Sponsors. (It is not too late to join this group of MBE and Corporate Sponsors.) Please email Tatiana Paredes at tparedes@gnemsdc.org to reserve your space immediately. We have ads in the Boston Business Journal this week and we are expecting a full house. It is now confirmed, David Hinson, the National Director of the Minority Business Development Agency will be joining an illustrious line up of minority business and financial experts on March 3 at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston. "As National Director of the Minority Business Development Agency (MBDA), Mr. Hinson oversees five regional offices and a network of 48 minority business centers providing services to promote the growth and competitiveness of minority businesses. The overall mission of MBDA is to achieve economic parity for the minority business community. In order to achieve this goal, MBDA is focused on building the foundation for the next generation of $100 million dollar minority-owned companies. Mr. Hinson is uniquely qualified to lead MBDA. Prior to joining MBDA, Mr. Hinson was President and CEO of Wealth Management Network, Inc., a multi-million dollar independent, financial advisory boutique. Before his own path into entrepreneurship, Mr. Hinson managed a 10-state sales region as Director of Advisory Services for Envestnet Asset Management, a $70 billion financial advisory firm. In his capacity, Mr. Hinson provided advice in asset allocation, portfolio construction, technology and product implementation. He also served as Managing Director of Business Development for the company. In addition, Mr. Hinson previously held a variety of senior-level and mid-management positions at Bank of America, Morgan Stanley & Company, First Chicago (now JP Morgan Chase) and the Village Foundation. Mr. Hinson received an MBA in finance from The University of Pennsylvania Wharton School, and abachelor's degree in insurance and finance with honors from Howard University in Washington, DC. In addition, he completed a fellowship in international finance with honors from the Stockholm School of Economics and graduate-level studies in French with honors at the University of Abidjan, in Ivory Coast, West Africa. Mr. Hinson is a native of St. Louis, MO, and currently resides in Washington, DC." "The Minority Business Development Agency (MBDA) is part of the U.S. Department of Commerce. MBDA is the only federal agency created specifically to foster the establishment and growth of minority-owned businesses in America. MBDA is an entrepreneurially focused organization committed to wealth creation in minority communities. The Agency's mission is to actively promote the growth and competitiveness of large, medium and small minority business enterprises (MBEs). MBDA actively coordinates and leverages public and private-sector resources that facilitate strategic alliances in support of its mission. The vision is to function as an entrepreneurial organization serving entrepreneurs." Small Business Forum - Wednesday, February 23 Doing Business with Municipalities All are invited to attend the "Doing Business With Municipalities" Forum in Stamford, CT this Wednesday from 2:00 PM to 6:00 PM at the Stamford Government Center. Procurement professionals from several towns from lower Fairfield County will be in attendance. The purpose of the event is "to assist you and your company with the appropriate information to bid on municipal opportunities, and to discover how to better position your company when bidding on municipal opportunities and how to register with cities and towns." I will serve on a panel and as a moderator on another panel along with Larry Wooten of Pitney Bowes, Tom Davis of Cartus and others. I want to thank Jere Eaton of PrintabiliTEES and the Stamford Multicultural Chamber of Commerce for organizing this along with the GNEMSDC Fairfield County Regional Advisory Committee. The event is FREE, but please call and register, 203-561-1250. City Fresh Foods Gets Contract with City of Boston Schools "It's official - after months of discussion - City Fresh Foods has partnered with Boston Public Schools in providing lunches and breakfast to East Boston Elementary Schools. We started in November with four schools. We are expecting to start servicing an additional four schools by the end of this month. All told the students and teachers have received the meals with enthusiasm. Unlike the current frozen product being shipped in from out of state, City Fresh lunches are cooked and chilled, delivered and then served hot, all within twelve hours of production. This allows us to do some neat things like provide salads as part of the meal. The first day we started with a fresh chicken product versus the typical processed product. I watched the teachers assist the smaller kids in cutting the chicken and they said it was well worth the effort. They asked how they could get a meal? This is truly an unprecedented event in Boston's School Food Service - we'll keep you posted on our progress." Supply Chain Management Position Open at United Rentals United Rentals currently has an opening for an Associate Strategic Sourcing Manager to be located in either their Shelton, CT or Charlotte, NC location. This is an associate level position for candidates with 2-4 years sourcing experience. The job description is attached. Interested candidates should send their resume to Panos Lapatas at panos@ur.com or Louis Williams at lwilliam@ur.com. Individual calls and/or e-mails will not be considered without the resume submission. No relocation is available for this position at this time. Please feel free to forward this to parties you think might be interested in this position. Thank you. Congratulations to Diggs Construction and Sikorsky Aircraft On behalf of the GNEMSDC board, I want to congratulate Diggs Construction and Sikorsky Aircraft for inking a multi year - multi million dollar contract that covers construction services at the Stratford based manufacturer of helicopters. I would like to thing that the ad that Diggs took out in this e-newsletter had something to do with it, but I imagine that this was more the result of the hard work and dedication of leaders at these companies. Keep up the good work. On-Line Registration for Gala Now Open On-Line Invitation to Gala Sent out Last Friday You can now register for the 2011 GNEMSDC Annual Awards Gala by visiting our Gala website. We encourage you to purchase your seats early. We have already pre-sold 500 tickets. This is one of the largest business dinners in the region. And it is not too late to sponsor or place an ad in the souvenir Gala Program Book. All of this information is available at the site listed above. GNEMSDC in the News "Malloy Treads Line on Unions" Thanks to Arun Sinha of Access Consulting for keeping an eye on media in Fairfield County and sharing with me this story by Alexander Soule in the most recent edition of the Fairfield County Business Journal. If you are in the news or see news that you think should be shared with our network, send it along.

Kiewit Infrastructure Opportunity Kiewit Infrastructure Co invites all DBE Firms who are certified as a Disadvantaged Business Enterprise with the Connecticut State Department of Transportation to submit proposals for the following project: Reconstruction of the Moses Wheeler Bridge, District No. 3, New Haven, Towns of Milford and Stratford. Project No.: 138-221 - Bid Date: March 30, 2011 Please contact: Courtney Dantone at Courtney.Dantone@kiewit.com Kiewit Infrastructure Co. 470 Chestnut Ridge Road Woodcliff Lake, New Jersey 07677 Fax: (201) 571-2600 An Equal Opportunity Employer

And Finally... Many states and municipalities around the country are facing tremendous budgetary constraints and deficits. As an economist I realize that much of this can be attributed to the economic recession of 2008 through 2010. Recessions wreck havoc on public sector budgets that rely on sales taxes, property taxes and income taxes. All of these sources of public revenues are sensitive to economic downturns. As more people lost their jobs, income taxes declined. As the incomes declined consumption and sales taxes declined. As the housing crisis picked up steam and foreclosures grew, property tax revenues fell off the cliff. While all of this was happening, some public expenditures increase automatically. In fact, economists call these "automatic stabilizers" because increases in things like unemployment insurance and general assistance (welfare) tend to keep people spending and thereby supporting the economy. In this environment all states and cities are looking under every rock for programs and activities that while desirable in normal times are "expendable" in these challenging times. One area that makes sense for states and municipalities (and the federal government as well) to consider is minority certification. There is NO justifiable reason under these fiscal considerations why any state or municipality should be engaged in the business of certifying minority or women owned enterprises. While I cannot and do not speak for the NMSDC, the NMSDC (and WBENC for women owned enterprises) could perform this function at least as well as the states and municipalities do today without it costing them a dime or negatively impacting their MBE utilization goals. The thing to remember is- certification is not contract compliance or minority business development. The states and municipalities should be engaged in contract compliance and minority business development, but there is no need for them to be involved with certification. All the states and municipalities have to do is accept NMSDC certification and call it a day. This would be better for MBEs, who no longer would have to file multiple certification applications, it would be better for the NMSDC corporate members and the public sector who would have a larger pool of MBEs to choose from, and most importantly it would be better for taxpayers, who I imagine are not even aware that their scarce resources are being used in such an unproductive way. In your service, Dr. Fred © 2011 by Dr Fred. McKinney, President/CEO of The Greater New England Minority Supplier Development Council. All rights reserved. No part of this online publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission from Dr Fred. McKinney or www.gnemsdc.org. The graphics, forms and structure contained within this site are copyright of Dr Fred. McKinney or www.gnemsdc.org or the respective member companies. www.gnemsdc.org cannot be held liable for typographical errors, layout error or misinformation contained herein.