{"id":369555,"date":"2025-11-10T16:34:08","date_gmt":"2025-11-10T16:34:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/369555\/"},"modified":"2025-11-10T16:34:08","modified_gmt":"2025-11-10T16:34:08","slug":"increasing-inclusion-in-the-citys-contracting-process","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/369555\/","title":{"rendered":"Increasing inclusion in the city\u2019s contracting process"},"content":{"rendered":"

Michael Garner isn\u2019t just New York City\u2019s first-ever chief business diversity officer \u2013 he\u2019s also a \u201cchange agent,\u201d working to make the business, policy and culture of the city more inclusive. In the\u00a0 nearly three years he\u2019s held the role, Garner oversees the city\u2019s Minority- and Women-Owned Business Enterprises program. Under his leadership, the city has surpassed its MWBE-utilization goal to have 30% of all municipal contracts be awarded to MWBEs, welcoming diversity in city business. Previously, Garner was the first chief diversity and inclusion officer for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. He spoke to City & State ahead of its Diversity & Procurement Summit<\/a> on Thursday, where he is to deliver keynote remarks. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.<\/p>\n

As the city\u2019s first chief business diversity officer, what have your primary focuses been during your nearly three years in the role?<\/strong>\u00a0<\/p>\n

The focus has been to reengineer and change the way the City of New York does business to be more inclusive. That\u2019s been a combination of our state laws changed, that\u2019s been a combination of changing policies, which has resulted in a record number of contracts being awarded to city-certified MWBEs. For the first time in history, we have exceeded 30% \u2013\u00a0 currently speaking, the City of New York is awarding 36% of all of its contracts to city-certified MWBEs.<\/p>\n

Since you\u2019ve assumed your role, $24 billion has been awarded to MWBEs. How were you and your team able to accomplish this?\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

By giving full authority by Mayor [Eric] Adams to execute our daily duties and responsibilities, having the adequate funding and staff in order to once again execute our daily duties and responsibilities. By having the ability to go to Albany and work with our legislative leaders in order to get all of Mayor Adams\u2019 MWBE bills passed in one legislative session, and then having those bills signed into New York state law by Gov. Kathy Hochul. We have not only changed laws, we changed policies, we changed the culture and we are driving equity in communities of color who have historically been shut out. The City of New York has the best MWBE program in the nation, based upon measurable results of $24 billion being awarded to minority women owned businesses, equaling 36% since Mayor Adams\u2019 first day in office, which was in January 2022.<\/p>\n

Can you tell me about the new \u201cBuild Your Business With New York City\u201d initiative?\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Based upon the success that we have had, we wanted to highlight success stories. There are a lot of MWBE firms receiving sizable contracts, and so we are going to advertise the success of the City of New York\u2019s MWBE programs next week, starting with a \u201cBuild Your Business With New York City\u201d advertising campaign. The goal here is to advertise the success that we have had; also to encourage more ethnic minority and women firms to apply to become certified by the City of New York so we can better integrate these businesses into the various procurement processes at the more than 50 New York City agencies and public authorities.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s next for New York MWBEs? Any initiatives or policy in the works to further support underserved businesses?\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

The mayor has appointed a 50-member MWBE Advisory Council that\u2019s chaired by myself, co-chaired by former New York City Controller Bill Thompson and the other co-chair is Liz Velez, Chairperson Emeritus of the New York Building Congress. We have a lot of elected officials who helped us get our legislative agenda passed in Albany, we have business leaders and we have MWBE-advocate groups and associations as part of this 50-member advisory council. They are sending us their recommendations of how the City of New York\u2019s MWBE program can operate more effectively and efficiently. We are in an era right now of institutionalizing all of this \u2013 the laws, the policies and their recommendations \u2014 as we move forward. The City of New York will maintain its dominance in the nation with awarding contracts to certify minority and women owned businesses.<\/p>\n

What is the city doing well in the MWBE, diversity and procurement space? Where are improvements needed?\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Where we have had success is increasing the number of companies who are applying and being certified by the City of New York. More so, once they\u2019re certified, we are now better at integrating them into the procurement process at the more than 50 New York City agencies and public authorities. We\u2019re focusing on successful integration of certified MWBE firms into procurement processes at the agencies. We are also looking to improve the amount of contracts that we are awarding to Black, Hispanic and Asian businesses. We effectively call that \u201cdealing with the disparity within the disparity.\u201d There\u2019s been a gradual increase of contracts to those sectors, and we will continue to focus on how the City of New York can do a more effective job of integrating those firms into the various procurement processes.<\/p>\n

What drives you in your work in the diversity and inclusion space? How did you come to work on this issue?<\/strong><\/p>\n

What drives me is the ability to help people and to help business owners who need navigation into how to effectively do business with the City of New York. I spent 15 years at the New York City School Construction Authority, leaving a legacy there: that agency having one of the best MWBE programs in the nation. I also spent 14 years at the MTA, which is the largest transportation network in the country, and we were able to turn their MWBE program around there from worst to first. Certainly having the ability now to be appointed as New York City\u2019s first Chief Business Diversity Officer gave my staff and I the platform to integrate the best practices that we\u2019ve learned from two of the most complicated agencies in the country, bringing those best practices here at the city and driving MWBE equity like in no other time in the history. I\u2019ve been fortunate enough to be a change agent, driving change and reengineering processes in order to make sure that the institution\u2019s contract process is awarded in a cost-effective manner, because it\u2019s taxpayers\u2019 money is being spent, but also to award contracts in a more inclusive manner. If there\u2019s any barriers to entry that would prevent these institutions from doing that, we use our legislative power to change state laws.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Michael Garner isn\u2019t just New York City\u2019s first-ever chief business diversity officer \u2013 he\u2019s also a \u201cchange agent,\u201d…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":369556,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5122],"tags":[5229,2879,18635,405,403,5226,5225,5228,5227,46521,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":["post-369555","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-america","tag-events","tag-interviews-profiles","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-newyork","tag-newyorkcity","tag-ny","tag-nyc","tag-nyn-media","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115526374883605113","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/369555","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=369555"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/369555\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/369556"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=369555"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=369555"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=369555"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}