-: Camille Blunt, director of the Office of Minority
and Women Business Development for the city of Indianapolis.
So we are advocates for our certified vendors.
Those vendors are minorities, women, veteran,
and disability owned business owners.
We work with them.
We do outreach.
We get them certified.
We do events so that they can network
and meet other business owners,
and really just kinda be a resource for them
as they try to navigate getting contracts
with the city of Indianapolis.
The main goal is to get to equity in our city,
to make sure that businesses are getting their fair share
of opportunity that comes out of the city,
so some of our contracting is limited
because we do resurfacing and building buildings
and things of that nature,
so sometimes that leaves people out,
but my main goal and the mission of our office
is to try to spread equity to our community.
I do a lot of making introductions,
so I spent a lot of time meeting with business owners
to find out what do you actually do,
and then when I hear about opportunities,
I'm able to tell them
or connect them to the appropriate people
so that they can talk about their business,
explain what they do, create relationships,
because when a prime contractor feels comfortable with them,
then they will subcontract work to them.
And so we're all about creating those relationships
between people that may otherwise not know each other.
So sometimes I'm trying to make a connection
that will help their business,
that will kinda springboard their business.
For example, they may need bonding capacity,
and so we have a certified person that does bonding,
can help people with bonding capacity.
So sometimes it's just as simple as
connecting that business with the potential business
so that they can build up their capacity
to be able to get work.