Dominion Energy recently hosted a symposium at their Salt Lake City Offices, organized by the Department of Energy's Office of Economic Impact and Diversity and the newly formed Utah Minority Business Development Agency (MDBA). The one-day event was attended by a diverse array of local companies, entrepreneurs, and businesses focused on spotlighting the abundant opportunities available to minority businesses in the energy sector both locally and federally.

The Minority Business Development Agency (MBDA) was established earlier this year as a result of a grant awarded to Salt Lake Community College to assist minority-owned businesses. The grant was awarded in fall of 2022 by the Department of Commerce and Utah was one of six states to be awarded this opportunity. The MBDA focuses on facilitating growth of qualifying businesses through counseling and mentoring, promoting trade, helping to create and retain jobs and by providing assistance to capital contracts and grants. The MBDA joins a network of 42 nationwide centers, standing as Utah's sole federally funded agency dedicated to nurturing and cultivating a collaborative ecosystem to grow minority-owned enterprises (MBEs), minorities and tribal nations.

The culmination of the event took the form of an engaging live Q&A session under the guidance of Shalaya Morissette, Chief of the Minority Business and Workforce Division at the Department of Energy. Morissette enlightened attendees about avenues for securing funding and guidance from the Department of Energy for innovative startups with a focus on energy. Regarding the department's long-term objectives, Morissette elaborated, “Our long-term goal is to have established and maintained the organizational infrastructure at the Department of Energy that will have enabled us to contribute to the achievement of a transition to a clean energy economy. More specifically, that means doing something we can, from advancing Community Benefits Agreements in DOE funding opportunities to convening stakeholders within the energy ecosystems to meet our eight policy priorities as part of the Justice40 Initiative.”

This event served as a poignant reminder of the remarkable outcomes that emerge when our communities unite with organizations such as Dominion Energy, the DOE, and the MBDA. Deon Henderson, Business Advisor at MDBA encapsulated a key insight from the event, noting “One key takeaway that was garnered from this event was that to address the challenges of minority-owned businesses, we must first make our community aware of the challenges. Once the challenges are identified, and opportunities to engage are presented, members of the energy sector in Utah are all engaged in the participation process. We were able to show viable partnership, contract and procurement opportunities, funding resources and grants that truly bring value to building these relationships with minority-owned businesses.”