DGEP Project Team Leads
The firms that have been procured to serve as part of DGEP’s professional ecosystem partners are comprised of local black-founded and black-led organizations including women-owned. These firms – from architectural firms responsible for the construction renderings to the commercial real estate professional ensuring it will be built community based contractors to the firms responsible for the branding and marketing to the attorney and accounting firms making sure the governance and intellectual property of DGEP is all in order to the family-owned HUB certified firm responsible for business planning to the 110-year-old bank that is the depository of funds to the management consulting firm leading the team through the project planning phase – are all black-founded, black-led, and the best in the business at what they do.
Community Partners
These DGEP partnering organizations represent anti-racist educators, women empowerment groups, former criminal court judges and U.S. Department of Justice officials, alongside the formerly incarcerated; local congregations and neighborhood associations and community advocacy organizations. It also includes parental advocacy organizations led by local school board members and initiatives that connect to the larger black and Latino global population.
Public Sector Partners
DGEP’s public sector partners include an array of public institutions that are willing to do the hard work of understanding the historic and contemporary role that their organizations and even positions play in racial inequity.
NonProfit & Philanthropic Partners
This collection of DGEP partners have incredible range and impact across the United States, but with real racial equity impact on the ground and in local communities. These partners include Corner Square Capital, a newly formed $200 million fund in North Carolina focused on investing in black businesses and black-led Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFIs) – first in 16 US states and eventually across America. Corner Square will be the first anchor tenant in DGEP Park. The first of many capital providers and impact investors that will locate in the hub – creating the Silicon Valley or Wall Street of racial equity investing – and being a global force.
Academic Partners
DGEP’s academic partners form the intellectual power behind the vision, just as the community partners form the heart. DGEP is where the hearts and minds of the world meet! As the leader in the intellectually anchoring of the world’s first equity education research and development park, North Carolina Central University brings an array of resources to the effort. NCCU, a leading HBCU:, is joined by its partner institutions – all world renown and research 1 institutions – who have co-anchored the world’s largest research park (RTP) for more than 70 years.
Private Sector Partners
DGEP’s private sector partners are among the most globally connected and innovatively thinking firms representing the initiative’s STAMPS ecosystem. APCO Worldwide is an independent, employee-owned business in over 30 global markets that helps to expand brands and communications. They are serving to add strategic partners at all levels of influence to ensure that DGEP has the right platform to scale racial equity innovations and tell the stories of our community of partners from the public, private, philanthropic, academic, and community sectors to ensure we are speaking in one powerful, but diverse voice, related to racial equity.