Vice President Kamala Harris will join a group including executives from corporate giants on Wednesday to promote a $4.7 billion commitment to empowering minority-owned businesses and underrepresented communities in Washington, DC and the surrounding area.
Harris will speak at an event at Howard University where the Greater Washington Partnership, a non-profit citizens’ alliance, will unveil the five-year, multi-billion dollar pledge. The funds go to businesses and communities in the Capital Region, including areas like Washington DC, Richmond and Baltimore.
Harris is a graduate of Howard, a prestigious historically black university in Washington. Other Biden administration officials such as Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo and Small Business Administrator Isabel Guzman will also appear at the event.
A White House official told CNBC in an email Monday that Harris “will discuss how the support of community lenders will give underserved entrepreneurs greater access to capital and build a fairer, more efficient, and just economy.” A spokesman for the SBA told CNBC that Guzman will be speaking at Wednesday’s event.
The gathering marks a new move by both business leaders and the Biden administration to help minority-owned businesses. Businesses and officials have made a wave of pledges to help communities of color following a racial justice bill sparked by the 2020 murder of George Floyd, and carried them out with varying degrees of success.
Peter Scher, vice chairman of banking giant JPMorgan Chase and chairman of the board of directors of the Greater Washington Partnership, told CNBC that Floyd’s murder and the dislocations caused by the coronavirus pandemic prompted corporate and university members of the group to think about how they can serve minority communities better could help .
“Between Covid’s disproportionate impact on underserved communities and George Floyd becoming a reckoning for many businesses and communities about the need to do more to address regional inequalities and the future of work, all of these factors became a powerful catalyst for our business partnership,” Scher said Monday.
Rosie Allen-Herring, president and CEO of United Way in the National Capital Area, said members want to move forward with real engagement rather than talking about it.
“As a member of the Council for Inclusive Growth, the conversations really went from lip service to how we truly commit to moving the needle not only as a region but also as a country on what is a difficult challenge for us.” Allen-Herring, a member of the Greater Washington Partnership Board, told CNBC in an interview.
Floyd, a black man, was killed by a former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin almost two years ago. Chauvin was sentenced to 22.5 years in prison after being found guilty of murder and manslaughter last year.
Floyd’s death at the hands of police sparked months of discussions about racial injustices in the US economy, the justice system and schools – among others – and what politicians and businesses can do to reduce them.
The Greater Washington Partnership said over a dozen companies are contributing to its new effort. These include Amazon, JPMorgan Chase, Capital One, Howard University and Georgetown University.
Funding over five years will go in part to procurement spending that could help minority-owned businesses, particularly Black and Latino-owned businesses.
Other parts of the massive investment will target wealth-building opportunities, including direct corporate investments in affordable housing. Another portion of the funds will benefit local financial institutions for community development and minority depositories. These financial and custodian banks are designed to help provide underrepresented communities with access to capital.
Andy Navarrete, Capital One’s Executive Vice President and Head of External Affairs, provided details of her role in the massive investment.
“Together with our colleagues at the Greater Washington Partnership, we are using our collective scale and resources to provide groups that have historically been underfunded access to capital, increase investment in Black and Hispanic-owned businesses, and break down structural barriers that… there are communities for black and brown,” Navarrete said in a statement to CNBC on Monday.
Wayne AI Frederick, the president of Howard University, told CNBC in a statement late Monday that they are working with the Greater Washington Partnership on this effort.
“We are proud to join the Greater Washington Partnership in this collaborative effort to impact supplier diversity and minority business in the region,” he said. “It’s an honor to host this event at Howard University and to have this conversation with so many great business leaders.”
A Georgetown spokesperson referred CNBC Monday to the university’s previously announced efforts to work with various companies. An Amazon spokesperson told CNBC about the Amazon Housing Equity Fund and its commitment of over $124 million to create more than 1,000 affordable homes.
A Raimondo representative did not respond to an email seeking comment.