State & Local Government Policy, Business and Technology

For Procurement Reform, Cities See Value in Learning What's Worked Elsewhere

Governing: The way Joann Massey sees it, city procurement is an issue of civil rights. As the director of minority- and women-owned business development for the city of Memphis, Tenn., Massey says she wants to use her city’s purchasing power to help bridge gaps of class and income inequality. And she points to Memphis’ own history as an epicenter of the civil rights fight, where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in 1968, a day after delivering his famous “Mountaintop” speech.

“A lot of Memphians have carried a burden or shame of sorts for many, many years,” she says. “That shame has been a motivator, thinking of how [King] died fighting for civil rights in our city.”

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