Success in Business

Excited doesn’t even begin to cover it!

I’m honored to join Judge Shannon Baldwin and Pam Gaskin (Houston Voting Initiative) on today’s panel:

Let’s Be Bold Together: America – The Story of Us!

🕒 3PM
📍 Fallbrook Church – Houston

Let’s talk voting rights, civic power, and our collective responsibility to shape the future.

Houston family — come out and be part of the conversation!

HoustonVotingInitiative

TODAY IS THE DAY.

Full circle moments are powerful.

This work started in 2005 when I was President of the Houston Lawyers Association. It continued with 100 Black Men Metropolitan Houston in 2010, became a National Bar Association Men’s Retreat event in 2014, and carried forward through many hands and hearts.

After 2019, the pandemic, and the murder of George Floyd, I honestly thought this work no longer mattered.

I was wrong.

Coming back this year, I realized we have so much more to offer our men and women of color than just what to do when stopped by the police. We have wisdom, history, context, and responsibility.

Today is about choices, character, leadership, and community.

Grateful to every volunteer, parent, youth, judge, lawyer, law enforcement officer, NOBLE, and our partners at the Harris County Public Defender and District Attorney offices for showing up.

The work continues.

To God be the Glory.

CommunityFirst PurposeDriven

Success In Business® presents
Resilience on the Record: Writing a DBE Social Disadvantage Personal Narrative—Without Re-Traumatizing
Tools for sharing your story with care, boundaries, and evidence

About This Workshop

This educational, healing-centered virtual workshop is designed to support DBE, SBA 8(a), and similarly situated applicants in understanding the context, purpose, and emotional demands of the Socially Disadvantaged Personal Narrative.

To become certified as an SBA 8(a) or Disadvantaged Business Enterprise (DBE), applicants from certain demographic groups who were once rebuttably presumed to be socially disadvantaged are now required to prepare and submit a Socially Disadvantaged Personal Narrative.
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There is still time to register for today's workshop- Success In Business® presents Resilience on the Record Writing a DBE Social Disadvantage Personal Narrative Without Re-Traumatizing: Tools for sharing your story with care and boundaries. Success In Business®

Happy New Year.

If you are a DBE, ACDBE, or MBE, 2026 will not reward the passive. It will reward theprepared. We are entering a new era, one where the rules are changing, the pressures are shifting, and the commitment of many institutions to diversity has been tested. In some rooms, it has been exposed. In other rooms, it has been quietly abandoned. And yet, here is the truth: we have been here before.

Our businesses have always had to win in environments that were not designed with us in mind.That is precisely why this moment, right now, is an opportunity to retool, to be strategic, and tobecome even more intentional about how we grow and compete.

This New Year should not only be a time for reflection. It should be a time for recalibration. Arecalibration of our thoughts, our posture, and our partnerships, because what wasintended to discourage us can become the very fuel that positions us to grow.
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What Was Meant for Harm: A 2026 Call for DBEs and MBEs to Strategize and Grow If you are a DBE, ACDBE, or MBE, 2026 will not reward the passive. It will reward theprepared. We are entering a new era, one where the rules are changing, the pressures are shifting, and the commitment of many institutions to diversity has been tested. In some rooms, it has been exposed. In other r...

Success In Business® presents Resilience on the Record: Writing a DBE Social Disadvantage Personal Narrative—Without Re-Traumatizing. Tools for sharing your story with care, boundaries, and evidence

About This Workshop: This educational, healing-centered virtual workshop is designed to support DBE, SBA 8(a), and similarly situated applicants in understanding the context, purpose, and emotional demands of the Socially Disadvantaged Personal Narrative. To become certified as an SBA 8(a) or Disadvantaged Business Enterprise (DBE), applicants from certain demographic groups who were once rebuttably presumed to be socially disadvantaged are now required to prepare and submit a Socially Disadvantaged Personal Narrative.

Notwithstanding the broader social dysfunction reflected in this new requirement, the more immediate challenge applicants must navigate is the process of writing and disclosing deeply personal experiences to strangers—a process that can be emotionally taxing and psychologically complex.

This workshop responds to that reality by centering psychological safety, emotional boundaries, and informed preparation. Participants are not asked to disclose personal experiences. Instead, the session focuses on understanding the framework, history, and emotional impact of the Socially Disadvantaged Personal Narrative so participants can approach future drafting work with clarity, care, and confidence.

Narrative

Success In Business® presents Resilience on the Record Writing a DBE Social Disadvantage Personal Narrative Without Re-Traumatizing: Tools for sharing your story with care and boundaries. Success In Business®

Writing a DBE Social Disadvantage Personal Narrative Without Re-Traumatizing: Tools for sharing your story with care and boundaries.

Success In Business® presents
Resilience on the Record: Writing a DBE Social Disadvantage Personal Narrative—Without Re-Traumatizing
Tools for sharing your story with care, boundaries, and evidence

About This Workshop


This educational, healing-centered virtual workshop is designed to support DBE, SBA 8(a), and similarly situated applicants in understanding the context, purpose, and emotional demands of the Socially Disadvantaged Personal Narrative.

To become certified as an SBA 8(a) or Disadvantaged Business Enterprise (DBE), applicants from certain demographic groups who were once rebuttably presumed to be socially disadvantaged are now required to prepare and submit a Socially Disadvantaged Personal Narrative.

Success In Business® presents Resilience on the Record Writing a DBE Social Disadvantage Personal Narrative Without Re-Traumatizing: Tools for sharing your story with care and boundaries. Success In Business®

Success In Business® presents
Resilience on the Record: Writing a DBE Social Disadvantage Personal Narrative—Without Re-Traumatizing
Tools for sharing your story with care, boundaries, and evidence

About This Workshop
Writing a DBE or SBA social disadvantage narrative can be emotionally taxing. Current rules require applicants to provide individualized accounts of discrimination, exclusion, or systemic barriers—often forcing people to revisit harmful or traumatic experiences.

This healing-centered, trauma-informed, and legally grounded workshop is designed to help you tell your story with care, boundaries, and evidence—without re-traumatizing yourself.

Across two hours, you will learn how to transform lived experience into a clear, structured, and eligibility-ready narrative that protects your emotional well-being while meeting federal program requirements.

Resilience on the Record: Writing a DBE Narrative Without Re-Traumatizing A healing-centered workshop for DBE and 8(a) applicants on writing social disadvantage narratives without re-traumatizing. Success In Business® presents

Rolling Back Civil Rights in Contracting

The Interim Final Rule issued October 3, 2025, and TxDOT’s immediate suspension of DBE contract goals and related reporting, is deeply troubling. This action not only undermines decades of progress in ensuring fair participation of minority and women-owned businesses in federal transportation contracting, but it also raises profound legal concerns.

First, the outright suspension of DBE goals and demographic reporting directly conflicts with Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits recipients of federal funds from engaging in practices that result in racial discrimination, intentional or otherwise. By halting data collection and goals, TxDOT effectively eliminates the very compliance mechanisms necessary to enforce Title VI. Without demographic reporting or goal setting, systemic disparities can remain hidden and unaddressed, perpetuating exclusion.

Second, the IFR contradicts binding Supreme Court precedent, including Adarand Constructors, Inc. v. Peña (515 U.S. 200, 1995), which recognized the compelling governmental interest in remedying the effects of past and present discrimination in federal contracting, provided programs are narrowly tailored. Similarly, in Grutter v. Bollinger (539 U.S. 306, 2003) and more recently Fisher v. University of Texas (Fisher II, 579 U.S. 365, 2016), the Court reaffirmed that remedying historic and ongoing racial disparities can justify race-conscious measures under strict scrutiny.

The IFR’s blanket removal of race- and sex-based presumptions—without providing a lawful, narrowly tailored alternative—amounts to a de facto elimination of civil rights protections in contracting. It goes beyond tailoring and instead strips away statutory protections Congress deliberately designed under the DBE program (49 C.F.R. Part 26).

Finally, suspending DBE goals and recertification requirements places minority and women-owned firms at an immediate competitive disadvantage. This runs counter to congressional findings underlying the DBE statute itself: that “Black Americans, Hispanic Americans, Native Americans, and other minorities” have been historically and systematically denied equal opportunity in federally assisted contracting. Congress reaffirmed this compelling interest through multiple reauthorizations of the DBE program.

In short, the IFR and TxDOT’s response appear not only regressive but in violation of Title VI, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and established Supreme Court law. Stakeholders should consider immediate legal and policy challenges to protect the integrity of the DBE program and the civil rights of disadvantaged contractors.

Airport Minority Advisory Council Texas Department of Transportation

When Compliance Becomes Exclusion: Civil Rights Implications of USDOT’s New DBE Rule Rolling Back Civil Rights in ContractingThe Interim Final Rule issued October 3, 2025, and TxDOT’s immediate suspension of DBE contract goals and related

FTA-Funded Opportunities • DBE Matchmaking & How-To

City of Beaumont – Transit Contracting Forum

Who’s participating:
City of Beaumont — Beaumont Transit • City of Port Arthur — Port Arthur Transit •
South East Texas Regional Planning Commission (SETRPC) • Other agencies invited
Who should attend:

- Certified DBEs and small businesses ready to prime or subcontract
- Firms exploring DBE certification (TUCP) and vendor registration
- Prime contractors seeking qualified DBE partners and suppliers

What to expect:

- Briefings on upcoming FTA-funded procurements and timelines
- How to do business with local transit agencies (registration, insurance, compliance)
- Meet-and-match networking with agency buyers and prime contractors
- DBE/TUCP and SAM/UEI guidance tables (information

City of Beaumont – Transit Contracting Forum FTA-Funded Opportunities • DBE Matchmaking & How-To City of Beaumont – Transit Contracting Forum Who’s participating: City of Beaumon