Increasing diversity in government contracts through partnership and policy

Event link: https://events.cityandstate.com/diversity-procurement-summit-2025/

New York leads the country in supporting and including Minority- and Women-Owned Business Enterprises in governmental procurement and contracts.

With around 11,000 MWBEs registered with New York City alone, city and state agencies have been working, separately and collaboratively, to improve certification procedures for diverse businesses, streamline contracting systems and educate business owners on governmental processes.

City & State’s Diversity & Procurement Summit: Facilitating Government Partnerships for NY’s Businesses, held on Thursday at 630Second in Manhattan’s Kips Bay, touched on these partnerships and the ways that the city’s and state’s respective MWBE programs can be strengthened and expanded.

New York City Chief Business Diversity Officer Michael Garner gave the first keynote speech. Garner explained that, in the nearly four years that Mayor Eric Adams has been in office, the city has increased its MWBE utilization and has awarded $24 billion in contracts to diverse businesses – the most of any city or state in the nation.  

The city’s first-ever chief business diversity officer said that it’s his team’s responsibility to find ways to include MWBEs, be it by creating online resources or going as far as to change state laws, as their inclusion improves economic stability for underserved communities.

“It was done because we were laser-focused, and we’re focused on solutions, not blinded by problems,” Garner told attendees. 

New York State Chief Procurement Officer Dhanraj Singh, who works out of the Office of General Services, gave the second keynote address. He described his purpose as making sure the state’s contracts are effective for the taxpayers while also being diverse enough to drive economic opportunity.

“The work that we do is profoundly important, because at the heart of public procurement is how government turns policy into progress,” Singh said.

Four panel discussions followed the speeches, delving deeper into how New York’s MWBE programs operate, what opportunities and challenges still face MWBEs and how the government can make things better.

The first panel, “Doing Business & Procurement Opportunities in New York,” explored how businesses can navigate government procurement through certifications, training, improving bids and collaboration. 

“I often say that being certified as a MWBE, or even getting a state or city contract is merely just a license to fish,” Ostroff Associates Senior Advisor of Procurement Services Ruth Walters said. “All you can do is have that as your credibility, but it’s really going to be up to all of us in the room to figure out how to market our business, figure out where the opportunities are and how to partner.”

The, “Building New York’s MWBE Programs,” was next, where agency leaders and advisors continued the conversation, giving more advice to business owners in the audience.

“We know that the key to the success that we have in New York is being able to develop a viable and dynamic ecosystem where individuals of all backgrounds have an opportunity to participate in this successful work,”

City & State Special Projects Editor John Celock moderated the third panel, “New York’s Biggest Projects,” which looked into how to use data and impact tracking to help MWBEs compete in the bidding process.

“Being certified certainly gets you a foot in the door, but that’s not necessarily going to be the determining factor on whether or not we’re going to work with you,” CDW Manager for Strategic Partnerships Adam Akmal-Gonzalez said. “You certainly have to have a core competency. You have to be able to deliver on the scope of what you say you can do.”

The event was held in partnership with GovTribe; was sponsored at the silver level by Anchin, A Posteriori, Community Capital New York, Brown & Weinraub, Davidoff Hutcher & Citron, Ostroff Associates and T-Mobile for Government; and was sponsored at the bronze level by Battery Park City Authority, Kawasaki, World Wide Technology and New York State Technology Enterprise Corporation.