Ten Minutes With David Cayemitte, CEO of Embrace Partners and the Minority Business Development Institute

David Cayemitte is the founder and CEO of Embrace Companions, a Princeton Junction, N.J.-based insurance coverage sector guide and CEO of the Minority Enterprise Improvement Institute (MBDI), which gives coaching and assist to spice up small minority, ladies and veteran-owned development companies. He has greater than three many years of expertise within the company insurance coverage market, together with with AIG and Vacationers. Embrace Companions is the primary and solely licensed MBE wholesale insurance coverage brokerage agency with a license to function in all 50 states. The institute introduced the launch of MBDI College, an internet coaching program, in November. 

This interview with ENR Deputy Editor Aileen Cho has been edited and condensed.

ENR: Inform me concerning the current launch of Minority Enterprise Improvement Institute MBDI College and the way it differs from different inclusion initiatives within the trade, together with Embrace’s function in offering bonding and underwriting providers.

Cayemitte: The launch of MBDI College is our most vital initiative thus far. It’s a nationwide platform designed to rework small enterprise house owners into sturdy development executives by way of a complete, four-year curriculum. 

RELATED LINK: Online Program Launched to Boost Skills, Bonding for Small and Disadvantaged Firms

A key part of this ecosystem is the function of Embrace Companions. It serves because the surety bonding underwriter for our members, offering the precise bonding capability that these companies have to scale. This mixture of schooling and tangible monetary backing is an enormous differentiator available in the market.

Whereas most trade initiatives supply six- or eight-week applications, these are sometimes too temporary to domesticate the systemic change required for true scaling. We take a unique method. We focus deeply on creating sturdy monetary presentation, which takes time. Our four-tier program permits for progressive studying—and since we use upfront data assessments, we are able to place enterprise house owners immediately into the courses that handle their particular gaps.

Now we have additionally been pioneers in how we ship this coaching. Way back to 2009, we had been providing hybrid fashions—live-streaming our New York Metropolis courses to members upstate. That was revolutionary on the time. Put up-COVID, the world has caught as much as that ‘zoomification,’ and now we have doubled down on engagement. MBDI College takes this know-how to a brand new degree with a strong studying administration system that permits us to transcend merely serving to contractors qualify for bonding; we’re constructing the infrastructure for his or her long-term success.

When was MBDI based, and who’re a few of your main trade companions?

Cayemitte: MBDI was formally based in December 2010, however in some ways, it was years within the making. It was fashioned as a direct response to a gaping gap we noticed available in the market: the necessity for a devoted institute that did not simply discuss alternative, but in addition supplied the rigorous schooling required to take away limitations to success. We realized that ‘entry’ to contracts does not imply a lot if you do not have the ‘readiness’ to execute them. The institute was constructed to be that bridge.

In fact, you can’t drive this sort of systemic change in a silo. We’re extremely proud to have main trade heavyweights strolling this path with us—companions like Vacationers Corp., Flagstar Financial institution, Axis and Octave Group which can be vital allies in understanding that investing in these small companies is an funding in the way forward for our trade.

What’s your origin story? What received you into this explicit area of interest of the development trade? What drew you to development?

Cayemitte: My favourite film is To Sir, with Love, a movie that highlights themes of respect, schooling and the transformative energy of understanding. These themes, coupled with my mom at all times instilling in me that an important factor you are able to do in life is to assist others, grew to become the bedrock of MBDI.

After spending 21 years in insurance coverage underwriting and govt administration—together with 16 years at AIG and 4.5 years at Vacationers—I began the Cayemitte Group. However the true turning level got here when the highway of life led me to New Orleans within the devastating aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

In late 2005, there was intense public concentrate on how reconstruction {dollars} had been being spent. Native enterprise house owners, significantly minority house owners, had been annoyed that giant federal contracts had been going to out-of-state corporations reasonably than to native companies that wanted them most. In response, [former] Mayor Ray Nagin signed an govt order in October 2006 to drive native participation, mandating targets like 50% native enterprise participation and 35% for minority- or women-controlled companies.

I had joined the Nationwide Black Chamber of Commerce, which invited me to a pivotal assembly with the [US Dept. of Housing and Urban Development.] I vividly keep in mind sitting in a Washington D.C. workplace with 16 ‘males in black’ who primarily instructed me: ‘Go meet with the Mayor’s workplace. Assist them perceive the impression of this order.’ Their concern was sensible: HUD can be closely concerned in rebuilding, and since it’s a public company, contractors would wish surety bonding. The truth was that almost all small native companies merely wouldn’t qualify.

Once we met with New Orleans officers, we confirmed that the town had no assets to assist small companies in qualifying for surety. We started insuring and bonding just a few dozen companies within the south to bridge that hole.

That success caught the eye of Ronald Langston, nationwide director of the federal Minority Enterprise Improvement Company, who met with me to debate serving [its] workplaces nationally. That was the second we sought nationwide licensing. Shortly after, I received concerned with the State of New York to handle the [Dormitory Authotity of the State of New York] Surety Bond Capital Entry program. It was this evolution—from the disaster of Katrina to a nationwide mandate—that finally led us to delivery MBDI, our not-for-profit arm devoted to making ready small companies to raise.

At present, now we have turned that have into an entire ecosystem we name The Platform. The institute has positioned greater than 1,000 contractors for bonding. Embrace Companions, which I launched in 2022 as a licensed MBE licensed in 50 states, acts as a wholesale brokerage and surety bonding underwriter. The Cayemitte Group handles the insurance coverage facet.

Collectively, we reside by the motto: ‘We Educate, We Bond, We Insure.’ This platform permits massive development managers and builders to fulfill their [contract] inclusion targets, which regularly run within the tons of of hundreds of thousands of {dollars}, by guaranteeing the small companies they rent are literally financially able to doing the work, and by positioning them to use their insurance coverage premium {dollars} towards these targets.

How has the trade advanced concerning small and deprived companies? What are your targets?

Cayemitte: To be trustworthy, the evolution has been a journey of fine intentions colliding with laborious realities and combined with political posturing. I typically assume again to my time in New Orleans after Katrina. The political will was there. We had govt orders explicitly calling for 35% participation from minority-controlled companies. However I keep in mind sitting in that room with the officers from HUD, and the roadblock wasn’t a scarcity of expertise; it was a scarcity of entry to surety bonding.

My purpose is to shift the trade’s focus from ‘compliance’ to ‘capability.’ We can not simply set targets if the infrastructure is not there to assist them. That’s the reason we constructed ‘The Platform’ combining schooling, bonding, and insurance coverage. We have to cease asking if these corporations exist and begin guaranteeing they’ve the monetary backing to carry out. My imaginative and prescient is that we transfer past counting participation percentages and begin measuring the sustainable wealth and stability we’re creating for these enterprise house owners. On the finish of the day, as the companies we prepare develop sturdy, they create actually well-paying jobs, and careers that may carry households out of poverty and into the center class. 

Our schooling platform at all times leads again to reasonably priced entry to capital. That’s the reason MBDI, in live performance with Embrace Companions, is closing on an underwriting credit score facility for small companies. This can be a tangible step ahead in fixing the capital entry subject that holds so many contractors again. We count on to pre-qualify greater than 150 companies for bonding within the first half of 2026 alone. We’re additionally including back-office assist providers below our ‘One Supply Benefit’ line to make sure these companies have the infrastructure to deal with that progress.