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Promoting workforce diversity is a passion for Rhonnda Parsons Edmiston, the diversity and business equity manager at Howard S. Wright, a Balfour Beatty Co. Last month the Small Business Administration‘s Portland office recognized Edmiston’s efforts by naming her a 2014 Oregon Small Business Champion.

Edmiston has spent her career working with small businesses and finding strategies to increase access for suppliers, subcontractors, veterans and women- and minority-owned businesses. She also works to educate young people about career opportunities in construction, and facilitate engagement between HSW staffers and the communities they work in, she said.

“I was brought on to help make a cultural transformation at HSW,” she said. “My job is to help small businesses identify opportunities to work with us and identify relationships with our project managers and superintendents.”

One recent success came during the Edith Green-Wendell Wyatt Federal Building renovation. She initiated the breakup of a large painting bid package into three smaller ones. A woman-owned company, Diverse Works Painting and Coatings, landed one of the contracts and ended up doing touch-ups on the steel-framed building as well as tenant improvements on several floors, she said.

“They did good work; there were no problems,” she said. “The next thing I knew, the project manager was telling other project managers. And now Diverse Works has dozens of projects in Portland and (is) trying to get up into Seattle.”

Edmiston also has spearheaded peer group interaction between 12 small subcontractors and several project executives and project managers. The quarterly business equity roundtables are geared to connect diverse job candidates with opportunities, she said. They also help increase the number of minority & women-owned business subcontractors and suppliers available to HSW.

“We have clients who value having community engagement on their projects,” she said. “It helps us build our client relationships and helps us in building relationships with the community. They welcome us into their neighborhoods and feel like we’re a good partner.”