Chamness
plays matchmaker
Sometimes
the toughest problems just need a fresh set of eyes.
And
that's exactly what Diane Chamness offered four years ago when
she agreed to try and resurrect the Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage
District's idea for a minority-participation program among its
contractors. It wasn't an easy task for Chamness considering that
millions of dollars and years of hard work had left the program
exactly where it started: a good concept with no application in
the real world.
"I
think they had a vision but no clear plan," Chamness said.
"To their credit, they came up with a great idea, but no
one was able to get their hands around it."
State
Sen. Gary George, D-Milwaukee, had hatched the original idea several
years earlier when he saw how little involvement women- and minority-owned
firms had in a thriving state construction market. So George spurred
the formation of the Minority Business Work Force Development
Project, which included several organizations and state and local
agencies, including MMSD.
The
intent, Chamness said, was to ensure that more women and minority
businesses participated in state projects, but as ideas flared
up and then out, the member agencies and organizations began to
drop out of the program until only MMSD remained.
"I
was working for an agency trying to get its hands around this,
but it didn't," Chamness said. "That's when I was approached
by Antonio Riley, who was the chairman of the MMSD Commission,
and he asked me to take a look at the program. I told him I thought
there were a million holes in it. I came up with a program that
embodied the vision but in a different way."
Chamness
said she figured that if the program targeted the construction
industry in southeast Wisconsin, then she needed to go straight
to the businesses in that industry.
She
decided to pitch to those companies the idea of becoming more
diversified.
"MMSD
liked the idea, but when I started talking to building businesses,
those people didn't play on the same teams as people in minority
businesses," Chamness said.
"So
we decided to make a matchmaking program."
Chamness
established a program of approaching companies with the idea of
diversification, of adding minorities and women to the staff in
management positions. If the firms agree, she and her partners,
Earl Buford and Jose Galvan, go to community-based organizations
that know of people looking for work who have skill sets to match
the company's needs.
Chamness
develops the job descriptions and training programs and corals
the job candidates. The company selects people from the pool and
trains them for the job.
At
the end of training, if the person stays with the company for
at least 30 days, Chamness, using about $200,000 a year from MMSD,
reimburses the company for a portion of its training costs.
"What's
good about the program is it truly meets the vision of the people
who crafted it," she said. "Employers get motivated
individuals from the community, and employees get embraced by
the companies. It trains people, teaches and mentors them. It
teaches organizations to see minorities and women in a different
light."
And
it's an unprecedented success. In the last four years, Chamness'
program has placed 104 individuals with various construction companies.
Of those placements, 70 percent are still with the companies.
That's a far cry from the zero placements in the years preceding
Chamness' involvement.
"It's
way bigger than what we thought we were doing, and I can't find
any statistics nationally that match what we've done," Chamness
said. "It's taken on a life of its own, and that's OK. I
was talking to a company that never did work with MMSD, but now
they're doing it because they have the depth of staff to go after
the bigger projects."
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