In my nearly 25 years working at the intersection of civil rights and economic opportunity, one thing has always remained constant: when women and people of color are shut out of the economy, the economy suffers. The disparities are not theoretical. In fact, they show up in who gets the contract, who hires the next ten workers, whose children inherit a business, and whose neighborhood gets reinvested in. Right now, those disparities are being exacerbated by regressive economic policies in the name of political expediency.
New Yorkers know what happens when we prioritize growing the economy for everyone. In 2011, when I started overseeing the state’s Minority- and Women-Owned Business Enterprise program, the utilization rate – the share of state contracting dollars going to certified MWBEs – was around 10 percent. Over the next several years, as I became Counsel to the Governor, we expanded utilization to nearly 30 percent. We did it by fixing a broken certification process, holding state agencies and authorities accountable, publishing the data and reinforcing the benefits of the program for all New Yorkers – and we got results.
New York has now exceeded its 30 percent MWBE goal for five consecutive years, disbursing a record $3.3 billion to certified firms in fiscal year 2024–25 alone, and nearly $15 billion since 2020. Roughly 9,700 certified MWBEs are now in the state’s directory. And the legislature extended the program through 2028. This is the largest, most durable proof point in the country that an inclusive contracting program can be built, defended, and scaled.
The philosophy of economic opportunity for all, however, is now under coordinated assault at both state and federal levels. In December 2025, the Texas Comptroller unilaterally stripped more than 15,000 businesses owned by women and people of color of their certification in the state’s Historically Underutilized Business program, which has been in effect for more than 35 years. The Global Black Economic Forum, along with our co-counsel Petrillo, Klein + Boxer, filed a landmark lawsuit on behalf of six businesses and a trade organization arguing that the Comptroller, as an executive officer, has no legal authority to override a law passed by the Legislature. In April, a Texas District Court Judge agreed and temporarily blocked the Comptroller’s regulations. My team and I will be heading to trial in November. However, the case is a signal of what’s to come if we don’t fight these coordinated attacks – executive state officials will try to erase a generation of economic opportunity with the stroke of a pen.
At the federal level, the assault on economic opportunity is well underway. The Minority Business Development Agency – which in fiscal year 2024 alone helped Black businesses access $1.5 billion in capital and more than $2.6 billion in contracts, and helped create or retain 23,000 jobs – was effectively shuttered last year. Then, in March 2026, President Donald Trump signed an executive order requiring federal contractors to certify they will not engage in what the order calls “racially discriminatory DEI activities,” backed by the threat of contract cancellation, debarment, and False Claims Act liability. And in early May, members of Congress introduced legislation that goes even further – essentially codifying the order and eliminating contracting goals and opportunities for socially and economically disadvantaged small businesses.
These efforts defy basic economics. Black-owned businesses already receive just 1.2 percent of the $774 billion federal contracting market. According to a special edition of The Blackout Report released last month by GBEF, Onyx Impact, American Pride Rises, and The Araminta Project, an estimated $9.3 billion in annual Black wealth creation is at risk if access narrows further.
Despite the progress we have made in New York, the recent efforts by the federal government place its success in jeopardy. More than a third of New York’s state budget flows through federal dollars, and our largest contractors – the ones building our subways, hospitals and housing – all operate under federal contracting rules.
That is why we cannot limit our fight to one venue. We have to make the case in courtrooms, in the public square, in corporate boardrooms and in the legislature to shore up existing protections in the state and weatherproof it from attack.
New York wrote the playbook for what an inclusive economy can look like. The question now is whether we are prepared to defend it – in court, in Albany, in City Hall, and at the ballot box – against an organized effort to take it apart. The answer cannot be that we built it once and let it go.