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National Minority Supplier Development Council and Capital One Announce Winner of CATAPULT Competition
CATAPULT Program Features Business Development Training and Grant Competition
Washington, D.C. (September 11, 2017) – The National Minority Supplier Development Council (NMSDC) and the supplier diversity team at Capital One today announced the winner of the CATAPULT competition: Ricardo Regalado, CEO and Founder, Rozalado & Co. CATAPULT is a seven-month business development program designed to assist diverse business owners in creating innovative solutions to critical issues within their own organizations. Culmination of the program is a competition to create a digitally-oriented solution to a company-specific business challenge with the winner receiving a grant and additional advanced education and consultation.
Based in Chicago, the winning company, Rozalado & Co., is a single source solution for facility service needs. The company delivers high quality facility cleaning services to customers in a variety of markets including commercial and office buildings, restaurants, healthcare and educational facilities, commercial condominium and apartment buildings. They pitched Roza Route a data driven phone and smartwatch app that will be a B2B solution for the cleaning service industry. As a workflow tool, Roza Route will provide real-time data regarding a cleaning team’s performance in order to optimize workflow in the future. Together, Rozalado and Roza Route’s mission is to change the perception of cleaners and the cleaning service industry.
Regalado received one year of business coaching, a grant to implement the proposed solution, branding consultation, tuition for an advance minority supplier education program and registration to the 2017 annual NMSDC conference. Pitches were made to a panel of judges from Capital One and NMSDC. The final competition took place at the Capital One headquarters in McLean, VA.
“NMSDC is proud to partner with Capital One to honor the winner of the CATAPULT competition, Rozalado & Co.,” said NMSDC Chairman, Joseph Hinrichs, President, Global Operations at Ford Motor Company. “With minority-owned businesses responsible for $400 billion dollars of the total U.S. economy, we hope our support of CATAPULT will result in higher productivity and profits for these companies.”
Companies selected for the CATAPULT program participated in a wide variety of instructional courses with the main emphasis being on digital fundamentals, collaborative thinking workshops, one-on-one meetings with subject matter experts, and received feedback from a dedicated Advisory Board. Instructional courses and mentoring interactions took place two days per month between March and July 2017 at The Shop, Capital One’s Digital Lab in downtown Chicago.
“Curriculum for the program leverages Capital One’s digital expertise and provides foundational business acumen to help owners of diverse businesses develop innovative solutions to critical issues,” said Jim Gorzalski, Chief Procurement Officer at Capital One. “We saw a need to help diverse businesses close the digital divide. From mentoring to technical education, our goal is to ensure that diverse suppliers can compete for our business as well as business from other Fortune 500 firms.”
Ten companies were selected to participate in the inaugural CATAPULT program. These organizations represent a variety of industries and have been operational for three or more years. All participating companies committed to the use of digital solutions for business problems and had little experience with digital fundamentals before starting the program.
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About NMSDC
One of the country’s leading corporate membership organizations, NMSDC was chartered in 1972 to provide increased procurement and business opportunities for minority businesses of all sizes. The NMSDC Network includes a National Office in New York and 23 affiliate regional councils across the country. The network also includes five international partner organizations located in the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, China and South Africa. To meet the growing need for supplier diversity, NMSDC matches its nearly 12,000 certified minority-owned businesses to our network of more than 1,400 corporate members who wish to purchase their products, services and solutions. For more information, visit www.NMSDC.org.
About Capital One
At Capital One, we’re building a leading information-based technology company. Still founder-led, Capital One is on a mission to help our customers succeed by bringing ingenuity, simplicity, and humanity to banking. We measure our efforts by the success our customers enjoy and the advocacy they exhibit. We are succeeding because they are succeeding. Guided by our shared values, we thrive in an environment where collaboration and openness are valued. We believe that innovation is powered by perspective and that teamwork and respect for each other lead to superior results. We elevate each other and obsess about doing the right thing. Our associates serve with humility and a deep respect for their responsibility in helping our customers achieve their goals and realize their dreams. www.capitalone.com/inclusion