David Cayemitte is the founder and CEO of Embrace Partners, an insurance industry consultant based in Princeton Junction, NJ and CEO of the Minority Business Development Institute (MBDI), which provides training and support to advance small minority, women and veteran construction businesses. He has over three decades of experience in the corporate insurance market, including AIG and Travelers. Embrace Partners is MBE’s first and only certified wholesale insurance brokerage firm licensed to operate in all 50 states. The institute announced the launch of MBDI University, an online training program, in November.
This interview with ENR Deputy Editor Aileen Cho has been edited and condensed.
ENR: Tell me about the recent launch of MBDI University’s Minority Business Development Institute and how it differs from other industry inclusion initiatives, including Embrace’s role in providing underwriting and assurance services.
Cayemitte: The launch of MBDI University is our biggest initiative yet. It is a national platform designed to transform small business owners into strong construction executives through a comprehensive four-year curriculum.
RELATED LINK: Online program launched to empower skills and linkages for small and disadvantaged businesses
A key component of this ecosystem is the role of Embrace Partners. It serves as a bond underwriter for our participants, providing the real bonding capability these companies need to scale. This combination of education and tangible financial support is a huge differentiator in the market.
While most industry initiatives offer six- to eight-week programs, they are often too short to cultivate the systemic change needed for real scale. Let’s take a different approach. We focus deeply on developing a strong financial presentation, which takes time. Our four-level program allows for progressive learning, and because we use initial knowledge assessments, we can place business owners directly into classes that address their specific gaps.
We have also been pioneers in how we deliver this training. As early as 2009, we were offering hybrid models: streaming our New York City classes live to participants across the US state. This was revolutionary at the time. In the wake of COVID-19, the world has caught up with this “zooming” and we’ve redoubled the commitment. MBDI University takes this technology to a new level with a robust learning management system that allows us to go beyond simply helping contractors qualify for bonding; we are building the infrastructure for your long-term success.
When was MBDI founded and who are some of your key industry partners?
Cayemitte: MBDI was officially founded in December 2010, but in many ways, it was years in the making. It was formed in direct response to a huge hole we saw in the market: the need for a dedicated institute that not only talked about opportunities, but also provided the rigorous education needed to remove barriers to success. We realized that “access” to contracts doesn’t mean much if you don’t have the “willingness” to execute them. The high school was built to be that bridge.
Of course, you can’t drive this kind of systemic change in a silo. We are incredibly proud to have major industry heavyweights walking this path with us – partners like Travelers Corp., Flagstar Bank, Axis and Octave Group who are critical allies in understanding that investing in these small businesses is an investment in the future of our industry.
What is your origin story? What drew you to this particular niche in the construction industry? What drew you to construction?
Cayemitte: My favorite movie is To the Lord, with Lovea film that highlights themes of respect, education and the transformative power of understanding. These themes, along with the fact that my mother always instilled in me that the most important thing you can do in life is to help others, became the foundation of MBDI.
After spending 21 years in insurance underwriting and executive management, including 16 years at AIG and 4.5 years at Travelers, I started the Cayemitte Group. But the real turning point came when life’s path took me to New Orleans after the devastating aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.
In late 2005, there was intense public attention to how the reconstruction dollars were being spent. Local business owners, especially minority owners, were frustrated that large federal contracts were going to out-of-state companies instead of the local businesses that needed them most. In response, [former] Mayor Ray Nagin signed an executive order in October 2006 to boost local ownership, with goals including 50 percent local business ownership and 35 percent for minority- or women-owned businesses.
I had joined the National Black Chamber of Commerce, which invited me to a pivotal meeting with him [US Dept. of Housing and Urban Development.] I vividly remember sitting in an office in Washington DC with 16 “men in black” who basically told me, “Go meet with the mayor’s office.” Help them understand the impact of this order.’ His concern was practical: HUD would be heavily involved in rebuilding, and since it’s a public agency, contractors would need a bond. The reality was that most local small businesses simply wouldn’t qualify.
When we met with New Orleans officials, we confirmed that the city did not have the resources to support small businesses to qualify for the guarantee. We started to secure and link a few dozen companies in the south to bridge this gap.
This success caught the attention of Ronald Langston, National Director of the Federal Minority Business Development Agency, who met with me to discuss serving [its] offices nationwide. That was the time we applied for the national license. Shortly thereafter, I became involved with New York State to manage the [Dormitory Authotity of the State of New York] Guarantee capital access program. It was this evolution, from the Katrina crisis to a national mandate, that ultimately led to the birth of MBDI, our nonprofit arm dedicated to preparing small businesses to rise.
Today we have turned this experience into a complete ecosystem that we call The Platform. The institute has positioned more than 1,000 contractors for the link. Embrace Partners, which I launched in 2022 as a certified MBE licensed in 50 states, acts as a wholesale broker and bail bondsman. The Cayemitte Group takes care of the insurance.
Together, we live by the motto: ‘Educate, link, ensure’. This platform allows great construction managers and developers to meet theirs [contract] inclusion goals, often in the hundreds of millions of dollars, making sure the small businesses they hire are actually financially capable of doing the work and positioning them to apply their insurance premium dollars toward those goals.
How has the industry evolved with respect to small and disadvantaged businesses? What are your goals?
Cayemitte: To be honest, the evolution has been a journey of good intentions colliding with harsh realities and mixed with political posturing. I often think back to my time in New Orleans after Katrina. The political will was there. We had executive orders that explicitly call for a 35% stake in minority-controlled companies. But I remember sitting in that room with the HUD officials, and the blockage wasn’t a lack of talent; it was the lack of access to bail.
My goal is to shift the focus of the industry from ‘compliance’ to ‘capability’. We cannot set goals if there is no infrastructure to support them. That’s why we created “La Plataforma” which combines education, links and insurance. We need to stop asking if these companies exist and start making sure they have the financial backing to operate. My vision is that we go beyond counting share percentages and start measuring the sustainable wealth and stability we are creating for these entrepreneurs. At the end of the day, as the companies we build grow strong, they create high-paying jobs and careers that can lift families out of poverty and into the middle class.
Our educational platform always leads us to affordable access to capital. That’s why MBDI, in concert with Embrace Partners, is closing a small business underwriting line of credit. This is a tangible step forward in solving the access to capital problem that holds back so many contractors. We expect to pre-qualify over 150 companies for the tie-up in the first half of 2026 alone. We are also adding back-office support services to our “One Source Advantage” line to ensure these companies have the infrastructure to handle this growth.
