Featured Post: New Orleans – A City National Black MBA Association Doesn’t Want Us to Forget

By Andres Tapia – NEW ORLEANS

Just back from New Orleans where I was part of a Hewitt team attending the National Black MBA Association 2009 convention. While we have come back with hot resumes and compelling candidates well into the hiring process, I also came back with a heavy heart about a city still wounded by Katrina’s devastation. Some reflections.

It was two weeks before the opening of the 27^th annual National Black MBA Association Convention – with 15,000 participants and over 500 companies ready to descend on the city – when in 2005 Hurricane Katrina stormed through instead. The NBMBAA somehow managed to change the venue to San Diego and saved its conference that year — but beloved and vibrant parts of New Orleans were lost for a very long time, if not forever.

This week the NBMBAA fulfilled its promise to not forget New Orleans and staged its 31st Annual Convention at The Big Easy. Despite feeling the pinch of a recession that had fewer companies and attendees there than average (9000+ attendees, 300+ companies), NBMBAA CEO Barbara Thomas was focused not only on having a successful conference but also on ensuring the NBMBAA’s presence brought positive economic impact to New Orleans.

By some estimates, the convention itself had a $30M impact on the city due to the money that flowed in through attendees spending on transportation, lodging, and fine and down home dining that included crayfish, gumbo, and sweet potato pie while companies at the career fair drove demand up for hourly workers such as electricians, movers, caterers, drivers, security personnel, and technicians.

But NBMBAA’s contribution was even more intentional. In the three days before the phalanx of newly minted MBAs and razor sharp experienced professionals arrived in their dark suits loaded with copies of their resumes and business cards, NBMBAA offered to local businesses a series of workshops on entrepreneurship as well as on how to create compelling proposals for attracting federal government economic stimulus dollars.

The NBMBAA has not forgotten New Orleans, and many residents and the Katrina Diaspora hope others won’t either.

On an earlier trip just a few months ago, I had hopped into a taxi van, driven by Joseph, a Haitian immigrant and a resident of New Orleans for over a decade. He drove me past blocks of waterlogged, shuttered, and, gone-out-of-business storefronts. Seeing so many damaged buildings and businesses gone was heartbreaking.

But in the Lower Ninth Ward it was not seeing any buildings at all that grabbed me by the throat.

At first I could not understand what I was seeing as we drove down empty streets and past empty lots choked by kudzu in this nearly two-square mile section of New Orleans. As the sun was setting and we neared the intersection of Tupelo and Dauphine streets, I finally noticed the edges of concrete slabs peeking through the overgrown grass. Then I saw a set of door steps that went up to the top of the concrete slabs. It was then I realized that there used to be a house there… and there…and there…and there…

Joseph pulls the car over and takes me on a walk. He points down the street, “On the 4^th of July, this whole street and the others feeding into it would be filled with Smoky Joes with people grilling burgers and dogs. People would just walk up and down the street saying hello to each other. Girls over there would be jumping rope. Music everywhere.” He moves his arm in a sweeping motion as if attempting to conjure up from the vacant lots and empty streets the houses, the people, the aromas, the cacophony he’s describing.

“And then, the levees broke,” he continues. He tells me about  a twenty-foot wave that engulfed the Ninth Ward drowning most of its inhabitants and killing a community. In fact, according to an  August 28, 2009 article by Byron Pitts on CBS News Online just 2,600 of the 14,000 residents who lived in the lower Ninth Ward before Katrina have returned.  And an estimated 45,000 children in the city have some kind of mental health problem.  (See “Healing the Youngest Victims of Katrina.”)

Having grown up in a developing country, I witnessed towns in Peru being forgotten or being very slow to rebuild due to fewer resources and lack of commitment. But I cannot yet grasp how the most powerful economy in the world still has not been able to even come close to rebuilding one of its oldest, more venerable cities.

Is it the money or is it will?

For the NBMBAA it was both. The organization and the conference attendees did what they could this past week.  Many of the participants have roots in New Orleans or are close to people who do. Even as they were here to pursue their career ambitions hundreds made pilgrimages to the Ninth Ward to pay their respects and vow to be part of the resurrection. NBMBAA is coming back in three months to see the fruit of their entrepreneurship workshop efforts.   I ask Joseph what he wants people to know about what New Orleans needs. Despite the bleakness we just saw, he still has hope and one request: “Help out.”

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