Director of Minority and Women Business Development, City of Indianapolis

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.