The all-day “Sustainability Summit” was presented by the New York & New Jersey Minority Supplier Development Council.
Last week in New York, for the first time ever in the same room, Fortune 500 Corporations, some 200 minority owned small businesses and more than 40 panel experts gathered to discuss ways to create jobs, help the environment, reduce dependency on foreign oil and assist multi-ethnic businesses to bring economic development to the country’s hardest hit communities.
The all-day “Sustainability Summit” was presented by the New York & New Jersey Minority Supplier Development Council. The Summit was created to identify U.S.-based innovative minority small businesses in the cleantech and greentech world and provide them access to capital strategic partnering with large corporations.
The Summit’s Founding Director is Kevin V.G. Wells, General Counsel and Director of Minority Business Services to The Council, an organization that certifies minority business enterprises for Fortune 500 corporations. Here is what he had to say about the conference:
Q: What was the main achievement of this gathering?
A: At the Summit, the small business survival “three C’s mantra” — Capital, Competency, Capacity — was immediately thrust into the same room with the Fortune 500 sustainability “three P’s principle” — People, Planet, Productivity. The energy within and across sectors was unprecedented. Contacts and contracts were the topics of many discussions. The uniqueness of this comprehensive industry-wide sustainability conference was its laser focus on exploring and resolving the sustainability concerns of both a large multi-ethnic supplier base and purchasing corporations.
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