Kim BrattainFounder/ CEO, Kim Brattain Media · Award-winning Corporate and Documentary Film Producer

CMEDI (Charlotte Chamber of Commerce)

13 Nov 2012 · 2 min

Watch on YouTube

2:28

In this panel‑style discussion organized by the Charlotte Chamber of Commerce, several stakeholders outline the purpose, early experiences, and future aspirations of the C‑MEDI/C‑EMETI initiative, a program designed to connect and develop top‑performing minority‑owned businesses in Charlotte. Speaker A highlights the demographic shift toward a majority‑minority population by 2020 and argues that cultural diversity will be essential for corporate survival. Speakers B and D describe C‑MEDI’s monthly gatherings as a forum for sharing business acumen, identifying opportunities within large corporations, and fostering realistic, evolving growth expectations. Participants from the first cohort (Speaker C) position themselves as trailblazers, hoping their successes and missteps will pave the way for future companies to scale and compete on larger stages. Duke Energy’s investment (Speaker B) is presented as a commitment to economic development and cost‑efficient service delivery through minority‑owned firms. Speaker C also explains how their company supports the electrical grid and expects C‑MEDI to help train the next generation of power‑delivery workers. Speaker D discusses the benefits of the TPM program in building relationships and coaching smaller businesses. The conversation closes with a shared ambition to become Fortune‑500 companies, reflecting optimism and a collective drive for growth.

Chapters

By 2020, more than a third of the United States population will be made up of minorities, and corporations that are comfortable with cultural diversity will be the ones that survive.
The whole concept around C-MADi is to bring together top-performing minority-owned businesses in Charlotte on a monthly basis. One, to discuss, you know, business acumen, how can they make their businesses better. And also to come together to understand where the opportunities are within our given corporations.
Being in the first group of C-MEDI companies, I think we are the trailblazers per se. Hopefully the things that we do wrong, we will figure that out so the next group will do them right. So I hope that we're the ones who hold the door open for the next group of companies that are looking to grow up and play on a much larger field.
With CEMETI, I think we have to be realistic about what the intentions are and where we are right now. We're just getting started with this, and it's evolving, and we're learning a lot. We've got a lot of folks who have great intentions, and, you know, everyone's trying to put all the pieces together. I expect it to, to grow substantially over the next few years.
Duke Energy decided to invest in CEMETI for economic development of the communities that we serve. We realize that minority-owned businesses play a vital role in the economic growth of our company, as well as providing the services to our customers in a very cost-efficient way.
We are the guys who support the electrical grid, and by the electrical grid, meaning that we take power when it's generated and we make sure it gets to the end user, and that's through transmission and distribution. My expectations of C-MEDI is that it's going to allow SMS employ the next generation of power delivery workers. I look for it to be a great facilitator for a small company to grow up and become a bigger company.
So for TPM, it's been wonderful both for us as a company, but also for our ability to be involved with other entities and to coach. In plain language, it's a really good effort to try to help and grow businesses that otherwise may not have the opportunities to because they didn't have the relationships.
Everybody wants to be a Fortune 500.
So do I.