Tech Tuesday: Leveraging HBCUs, Minority Owned Businesses and Small Business Opportunities with Midwest Tech Bridge

This presentation features three leaders representing the Crane Small Business office, Tougaloo College Research and Development Foundation, and a Minority Owned (Native American) Business who will discuss their capabilities and how to best leverage expertise via the Midwest Tech Bridge. They will speak about how to leverage the expertise of Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU), minority institutions (MI), small businesses and non-traditional Department of Defense contractors to solve challenges faced by the warfighter.

Speakers include:

• Matthew Burkett, NSWC Crane’s deputy director for small business, who will discuss small business opportunities and how to leverage HBCUs, MIs and small businesses to address DoD challenges via Crane’s Small Business Office.

• Martin Toomajian, chief strategy and growth officer for Bakinaw Federal Contracting Inc., a Native American Tribally owned 8A company. Bakinaw is focused on RDT&E and STEM opportunities. He is a former U.S. Army chemical officer, taught at West Point and has 20 years of experience serving the defense contracting community, most recently as president of Energy, Environment and Material Sciences Global Business at Battelle.

• John Maddox, member of the Military Advisory Board for Tougaloo College Research and Development Foundation (TCRDF). TCRDF represents a consortium of more than 30 HBCUs, and works with IN3 to jointly identify and pursue federal and non-federal funding for a variety of defense research and development opportunities.

The event will be at the IN3 Offices, located on the 2nd Floor of the WestGate@ Crane Technology Park, 13598 East WestGate Drive, Odon, IN. There also is an option to attend virtually. The link to join virtually will be sent in your confirmation email upon registration. Event registration is available online.