William Michael Cunningham - Thriving As a Minority-Owned Business in Corporate America: Building a Pathway to Success for Minority Entrepreneurs

This Apress imprint is published by the registered company APress Media, LLC part of Springer Nature.

The registered company address is: 1 New York Plaza, New York, NY 10004, U.S.A.

This book aims to be a key reference resource for minority businesses and their supporters and customers. We explore and examine current trends, provide a directory of minority business developmentrelated resources, and document new ways minority businesses are thriving. We specifically include relevant information of the recent wave of corporate Black Lives Matter support pledges.

The main topic covered is the current state of minority businesses in the United States. We will look at minority businesses with an optimistic eye.

We explore the positive impact of the dramatic increase in the number of women and minority businesses created in the early 2010s and the increase in the type of firms.

We honestly discuss government contracting, including the Minority Business Development Agency (MBDA), the Offices of Minority and Women Inclusion (OMWI) from Dodd-Frank section 342. Section 342 of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act contains a provision creating an Office of Minority and Women Inclusion at various agencies to monitor the diversity efforts of the agencies, the regulated entities and agency contractors.

The book is important because it highlights unused and unrecognized resources at the federal, state, and local levels. There are many national, state, and local organizations focused on minority business development. We list and evaluate these entities.

This book is a need to have title because of the comprehensive, objective, and honest advice and information it provides on minority business development (in the midst of the most challenging period for the sector).

Data files and other relevant information are available for download. The URLs are: https://github.com/Apress/thriving-minority-owned-business and https://www.creativeinvest.com/thriving/ .

I would like to thank my college and graduate school interns, current and former, for their help. They are a remarkable group of talented young people. I have been honored to work with them all.

Mr. Andrew Taber, an economics student at Emory University, has been extremely helpful. He worked on this book as part of two summer internships with Creative Investment Research.

Other interns I would like to thank include Ethan Li, American University Washington Mentorship Program, Alice Gabidoulline, University of Michigan, Grace Pottebaum, American University Washington Mentorship Program, Faisal Gbadegbe, Georgetown Law School, Joseph LaRosa, The Ohio State University, Lana Feteiha, Dickinson College, Carlisle, PA; Christopher Moreira, American University Washington Mentorship Program; Amarilis Soler, Florida International University; and Yuyang Zhang, Boston University.

I would also like to thank Armani Jackson at FedEx Office in Maryland for printing early draft chapters for proof reading.

(Of course, any remaining errors and mistakes are mine and mine alone.)