By Ashleigh Fields
Correspondent
North Carolina has served as a springboard for Vice President Kamala Harris as she works towards publicly shaping her presidential platform policies and their focus. The city of Durham, its entrepreneurs and local economy have seen firsthand the benefits of her leadership as she unleashed billions in federal funding to small businesses in the area over the past two years.
“I will be a president who unites us around our highest aspirations. A president who leads and listens; who is realistic, practical and has common sense; and always fights for the American people,” Harris said last week during her acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. “From the courthouse to the White House, that has been my life’s work.”
Her initial approach to spurring this model for financial growth started through the Economic Opportunity Coalition founded in 2022 with the goal of aligning major investments in communities of color with investments made by the Biden-Harris administration. Founding EOC member companies include Ariel Investments, Bank of America, BNY Mellon, Capital One, Citi, Discover, Ford Foundation, Goldman Sachs, Google, H&R Block, Intercontinental Exchange, KeyBank, Kresge Foundation, Mastercard, McDonald’s, McKinsey & Company, Micron, Momentus Capital, Moody’s, Netflix, Next Street, PayPal, PNC, The Rockefeller Foundation, Starbucks, TIAA, Upstart, Vista Equity Partners and Wells Fargo.
“We are proud to be the first energy company to join the Economic Opportunity Coalition, with our shared commitment to represent the communities we serve with our supplier diversity program,” said Bob Frenzel, chairman, president and CEO of Xcel Energy. “We are supporting small- and diverse-owned businesses by targeting our spending on materials and services with diverse suppliers to 25% by 2025 as we deliver reliable, affordable service to our customers while leading the nation’s clean energy transition.”
Thus far, as a collective, these organizations have contributed millions to an overall amount of $3 billion invested in Durham from the Biden-Harris administration for entrepreneurs and small businesses. In early March, Harris returned to the Bull City to announce an additional $92 million primarily for early-stage startups in North Carolina.
“To be here on historic Black Wall Street in this district in Durham, I just stand here thinking of what has happened here over the years, both in terms of the strength of the community and then the challenges and the obstacles that were presented to this community, but also how it has rebounded in such an extraordinary way,” Harris told the crowd in attendance.
Her goal on the ground has been to mobilize large companies and federal agencies to cultivate relationships with minority-owned businesses. Harris reaffirmed, during the event, the administration’s pledge to increase by 50% federal contracts going to minority-owned businesses.
“We understand that, traditionally, minority-owned businesses have received a fraction of federal contracts often because the relationships are not there; the access, therefore, is not there; but the talent exists,” Harris stated. “Yes, this is about the right thing to do. It is a good thing to do. But, ultimately, it makes economic and financial sense for us to do this work. Because the bottom line and, yes, the bottom line, I speak in economic terms, is that this produces an extraordinary return on investment.”
The impact of her statements were on full display at the DNC as Durham Mayor Leonardo Williams spoke to the nation. He and his wife are the owners and operators of Zweli’s Kitchen, which they dubbed “America’s first Zimbabwean restaurant” in 2018.
“Now, thanks to small business grants and all of the help that we received from them [Biden-Harris], we now have three locations, and we employ at least 30 employees with a living wage,” Williams said. “But we are not alone. Under Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, more than a half million business applications have been filed in North Carolina.”
