Advising women, minorities on SUNY work
Angela Gibson, of Queens-based Abrahams Consulting Llc, attends Thursday's conference at SUNY Old Westbury on how women and minorities can get state university contracts. (April 12, 2012) Credit: Newsday/Audrey C. Tiernan
Patrick Adams, purchasing director at SUNY Old Westbury, wanted to make sure Thursday's conference on how women and minorities can get state university contracts was going to be different from all other such conferences that take place on Long Island.
So Adams brought "solicitations," or proposed contracts, to the conference with him.
He said there is a contract to be let for roof repair at the college's athletic center, another for interior painting at the dorms, and a third for information-technology work.
"At a lot of these conferences, you walk away after some nice presentations and with a stack of business cards," Adams said. "But no work. Women and minorities want work. I'm going to try to give work."
At a lunch later, Adams spoke of the contract opportunities.
About 70 people, many of them minorities and women who own small companies, turned out at the college for a daylong College Regional Minority and Women Business Enterprise Conference sponsored by Old Westbury and the Small Business Development Center at Farmingdale State College. The idea was to advise the attendees how to win contracts with the 64-campus state university system.
H. Carl McCall, chairman of the state university's board of trustees, said state agencies have a "commitment" outlined by Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo to spend 20 percent of their budgets on work for women and minorities. The money, McCall said, is for "people excluded in the past" from business opportunities.
The Rev. Calvin O. Butts III, Old Westbury's president, noted that small business is a major employer on Long Island. "In order to attack unemployment, we must build small business," Butts said.
Angela Gibson, a relationship broker and technology consultant at Queens-based Abrahams Consulting Llc, an information-technology company, had come out for the day to hear about the opportunities.
"It's been difficult to penetrate the state systems," Gibson said. She said she did manage to sell services to the state one time. "I want to learn more about this process."
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