Call for Proposals

We are looking for innovative and transformative content ideas that will move the needle towards economic parity and our march to $1 trillion in MBE annual revenue. Overall, a submitted proposal should touch on future trends, emerging needs, and/or efforts and solutions to overcome barriers.

All entries are due July 15, and will be judged by our community on or before August 1, with the most popular proposals selected for NMSDC staff review and programming.

Session Proposal Categories

Please review the session proposal categories prior to submitting:

• Amplifying Impact – proposed Impact Lab sessions should be collaborative and preferably interactive in nature, with MBEs and corporate leaders coming together to tackle the challenges of MBE access, inclusion, utilization, and growth. For example, equity of access to opportunities, contracting across MBE revenue categories, accurately tracking MBE revenue progress through transparency and accountability, corporation and MBE success stories, MBEs aligning their business with corporate ESG initiatives to drive revenue growth, pivoting together to fulfill gap areas, MBEs partnering with MBEs to unlock additional capital/contracts, etc.

• Elevating Supplier Diversity to Business Diversity – proposed sessions could cover topics in the areas of supplier diversity role in DEI, ESG initiatives, elevating MBE development to C-suite level, line of business leader engagement and accountability, spend transparency tools and practices, career path for supplier diversity professionals, how we got to the Billion Dollar Round Table, corporate role in scaling MBEs, cultivating next gen MBEs, spend and economic impact, etc.

• Leveraging Academia and NGOs for Growth – proposed sessions could cover topics in the areas of partnerships, value propositions, best practices, tools, the value of certification, certification legacy issues and solutions, etc.

• Removing Barriers with Public Policy and Advocacy – proposed sessions could cover topics in the areas of barriers and recommendations in policy and legislation at the federal, state, and local government levels, public/private partnerships, preparing for a meeting on the Hill, how to be an advocate at the local level, etc.

• Scaling MBEs – proposed sessions could cover topics in the areas of access to contracts, capital, information, talent, relationships, and technology, technology transfer, MBE succession planning, MBE pivoting to emerging areas, going global, EV solutions, clean energy solutions, government contracting, etc.

• Submitting Other Topics – Does your creative and innovative idea not fit within another category? We still want to hear it!