NAWBO Voice Heard: City of Charlotte Publishes Annual Report

NAWBO commends City of Charlotte Business Inclusion Department (CBI) for reporting gender and ethnicity numbers for procurement.

Washington, D.C. October 1, 2018— As the nation celebrates National Women’s Small Business month, the NAWBO Charlotte Chapter, under the leadership of Immediate Past Public Policy Director, Vilma Betancourt-O’Day, highlights the importance of the women business community and the power of their voice with a big win for Minority Women contractors in the City of Charlotte.

“The City of Charlotte deserves a round of applause for increasing the transparency in their contracting system,” explains Molly Gimmel, NAWBO National Board Chair. “As a female federal government contractor, I understand how important it is for women to receive parity in this field. Good data drives good public policy. With these studies, Charlotte will be able to pinpoint areas of low Minority Women involvement and take measures to increase participation of Minority Women-Owned businesses in their system. I hope these changes in Charlotte will inspire other cities across the country to look at their systems and when necessary make similar moves toward greater transparency and parity.”

For years, the NAWBO Charlotte Chapter has been working with NAWBO National to consistently advocate for a gender and ethnicity breakdown in the annual report produced by the CBI department in Charlotte. As of July 1, 2018, the City of Charlotte Business Inclusion Department upgraded their software to now allow for the break down of the procurement reports by gender and ethnicity. Last year, prior to the upgrading of the software, the Charlotte Business Inclusion Department manually gathered the data to include in the report which took significant manual labor.

“On behalf of the NAWBO Charlotte Chapter, we would like to commend Nancy Rosado of the Charlotte Business Inclusion Department and her amazing staff. The CBI team’s efforts began by manually gathering this information, and Nancy’s persistence brought this new software across the finish line,” said Marise Kumar, President of NAWBO Charlotte Board of Directors.  

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About NAWBO

Founded in 1975, NAWBO is the unified voice of America's more than 10million women-owned businesses representing the fastest growing segment of the economy. NAWBO is the only dues-based organization representing the interests of all women entrepreneurs across all industries.  NAWBO develops programs that help navigate women entrepreneurs through the various stages of their business growth. To learn more, please visit www.nawbo.org.