T
ech for good is a buzzy phrase these days, from media headlines to boardroom conversations in Silicon Valley and across the country. But how does it work for everyday Americans? For us at Baltimore Peninsula, technology helps us support innovation and spark meaningful change. Here, local small businesses benefit from tech for good through our data-informed and transparent approach to doing business. To advance equity and improve supplier diversity, we partnered with Sweeten Enterprises to create a sustainable and strategic action plan that would allow our contractors to more easily connect with local women- and minority-owned businesses (MWBE) for their projects. Sweeten also created an innovative Community Engagement Dashboard, a public portal that allows the community to track the progress on our hiring goals. “The dashboard is one of its kind,” says Sweeten CEO and founder Jean Brownhill. “No other developer is allowing the community to follow along in that amount of transparency. Usually all of that happens behind closed doors.” Opening up those doors is key to Baltimore Peninsula’s vision, mission and purpose – and it’s a part of our longterm commitment to and agreement with the city. To date,
our MWBE contracting rates stand at 35 percent minority-owned contractors and 13 percent women-owned businesses, to the tune of almost $98 million and $36.7 million, respectively. “It’s really a commitment of this project that it’s not just the dictation of the Memorandum of Understanding [between Baltimore Peninsula and the city],” says Brownhill. “It’s a culture of wanting to make sure there are women participating, there is local participation, there is minority participation – not just in construction but in the property management, in the tenant build outs.” Through this platform, one of the challenges Sweeten is working with us to solve is a systematic gatekeeping of who gets access to projects. Providing a direct connection between hiring decision-makers and MWBE business owners can help reduce those who-you-know privileges and promote equal hiring. For business owner Karen Tisdale, whose Baltimorebased asphalt milling and paving company Fallsway Construction was hired as a contractor on the Baltimore Peninsula project, this technology is a move in the right direction. “I’m excited to see [people] investing in platforms that showcase the qualifications and skills of small minority-owned and women-owned businesses such as mine, with the goal of providing the opportunity for … our businesses to be utilized on projects of this size and scope,” says Tisdale. But our work to contract with MWBE talent isn’t the only thing we’ve been doing to increase economic equity here. We work closely with partners at the Mayor’s Office of Employment Development to make sure we’re increasing employment access through new job creation that will lead to sustainable long-term employment for residents and workers. Keep reading to learn more about the valued partnerships that help us develop a strong, local workforce pipeline.
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No other developer is allowing the community to follow along in that amount of transparency.
Brownhill unveils our community engagement dashboard
-SWEETEN CEO AND FOUNDER JEAN BROWNHILL
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