On a snowy April evening, more than 125 businesspeople filled the New Hope Baptist Church Family Life Center to hear about a multibillion-dollar jackpot.
Members of the Colorado Black Chamber of Commerce were meeting to hear an update on FasTracks, the $4.7 billion rapid-transit project voters approved in November. Robert Willis sat alone in the back of the room, scanning the crowd for members who could bid on current jobs being described by Regional Transportation District spokesmen.
“Yes, my ears perk up when I hear these things,” Willis said later. “We’ve got to get our people in on this opportunity. Something like this doesn’t come around very often.”
As president of the chamber since May 2003, Willis is trying to resurrect a 20-year-old organization that had become ineffective. So far he has had some success, but in February he faced heavy criticism.
Black Chamber members thought their cash registers would ring when Denver hosted the NBA All-Star Weekend. They didn’t, and the members blamed Willis.
He accepts some of the criticism but says the event taught members an important lesson: They have to learn how to court corporate entities.
Willis, 50, is a former corporate executive who is comfortable in the upper echelon of Denver’s business community. When the Denver Botanic Gardens was looking to diversify its board of directors, it selected Willis. He also serves on Wells Fargo’s Rocky Mountain Region board of directors.
Black Chamber member Ron Springer describes him as a “corporate cat.”
Willis sees nothing wrong with that. Actually, it has always been his intention.
“My parents had instilled in me that they wanted me to be in a position where I could make a difference and be in a white-collar job,” he said.
He grew up in Quincy, Ill., a town of 50,000, and attended a Catholic school. During the summer, he played baseball with his all-white classmates. The experience gave him a lesson in the subtleties of racism.
“One of the better teams in the league happened to be all-black,” he said. When they played his team, the black kids taunted him.
“I would be called names such as ‘Tom’ and ‘Oreo,”‘ he said. “I understood what the slurs meant, but it was hard for me to accept it, coming from people who looked like me.”
His parents – a crane operator and a physical therapist – gave Willis the option of changing teams the following summer, but he persisted.
“I chose to stick it out, hanging out with my team again,” he said. “It shaped my life because what I experienced at that age was an opportunity to branch out and have relationships with people of all colors.”
He earned a degree in political science from Colorado College in 1976 – which had only 30 black students at the time – and intended to specialize in civil rights law.
His focus changed to financial power after he tried to buy a used Jaguar convertible. His dad took him into the bank to apply for a loan.
“It was intimidating … when you went to talk to the banker,” he said. “I picked up real quick the power that this individual had. I wanted to get into banking to make opportunities available for people who look like me.”
Over the next 18 years, he worked his way up to senior vice president at Norwest Bank – now Wells Fargo – and became the first black person to hold that position.
“I’ve always put myself in situations like that, where I might be the only black person in a certain position,” he said. “If I can do well, they look at me first as a person that did a job well. And if I can open up doors for other people that look like me, I take on challenges like that.”
When Black Chamber board members approached him about leading the group, he had just taken a buyout package from Comcast Corp., which had acquired AT&T Broadband. He saw that job as the way to continue giving back to the black community.
“I had opened doors when opportunities were available, so it was time for me to work in the African-American community,” he said. “At the time, (the chamber) was struggling, and I felt I had something to give.”
Founded in 1985
The organization he headed had strayed from its early aspirations. Twelve Denver-area businessmen and politicians founded the Colorado Black Chamber in 1985 to combat what they saw as a lack of diversity in hiring and contracting.
“We knew there had to be an organized group to sponsor and advocate the growth and development of black-owned businesses,” said Neel Levy, a founder and former chairman of the chamber’s board of directors.
In its early years, the chamber did just that, building its membership and presenting workshops to help members become more savvy. “We rounded up 150 members, 50 of which were corporate or city and county (organizations),” Levy said.
By the mid-1990s, though, the chamber had lost its focus. Levy left the board in 1995 because he couldn’t think of three companies that had landed “significant” contracts as a result of the chamber’s help.
“I still can’t, but (now) I’m optimistic,” he said.
In 1998, the National Black Chamber of Commerce broke ties with the Colorado chamber, citing a lack of cohesiveness and leadership.
“We were rather disappointed with the Colorado chamber,” said Harry Alfred, president of the national chamber, based in Washington. “It seems as though they didn’t have a focus on what needed to be done.”
If the group can show that it has solid finances, a strong board of directors and a strategic plan, Alfred said it is welcome to reapply.
“Hopefully, Denver will get its act together, and we’ll be there for them,” he said.
Members had complained that the chamber was becoming a good-ol’-boys’ network. If you didn’t belong to the tight-knit community of friends, family, co-workers and churchgoers, you wouldn’t hear about opportunities, critics say.
“It was a real closed group, very male-dominated,” said Susan Burks, founder and president of Burks Communications, a Denver-based advertising, marketing and public relations firm. “I never saw any opportunities to expand or grow my business. I never sensed any momentum from the organization.”
Somebody to “connect”
All that changed when Willis arrived in early 2003, Burks said. “Bob himself has facilitated some meetings for me with potential clients.”
That’s the kind of response chamber directors had hoped for when they hired him.
“We were looking for somebody who could connect with the business community and help assure them that the Black Chamber was a viable organization and could build programs,” said Darrell E. Nulan, chairman of the chamber’s board of directors and senior partner at the law firm of Trimble, Tate, Nulan, Evans & Holden. “We thought Bob was the best fit.”
Since 2003, membership has grown from 400 to 800, including 43 corporate sponsors.Willis doubled the number of corporate sponsors, attracting giants such as First Data and Frontier Airlines. The chamber’s annual budget has grown in the process, from $150,000 to $500,000.
That momentum helped Willis weather a recent round of criticism surrounding the NBA All-Star Weekend in Denver.
Overall, downtown hotels and some businesses benefited from the weekend, but others said it was a bust. In particular, some black business owners thought they would see a tourism windfall because the event attracted a large contingent of black athletes, celebrities and tourists.
Ron Springer said he joined the Black Chamber thinking it could help bring NBA visitors into his store Akente Express, an Afrocentric gallery in Five Points. When it didn’t happen, he grew disenchanted.
“(Willis) needs to go out there and press the flesh and see what the community’s needs are,” Springer said.
“I think he should have rallied for the community, and he didn’t,” said Rena Shead, co-owner and manager of M&Ds Cafe, who is not a member of the chamber. “There was a big uproar.”
Willis said the chamber was in contact with the NBA a year beforehand “to make them aware of African-American businesses that were in the Denver metropolitan area.”
“We were told that eight to 15 African-American businesses did get contracts,” Willis said. But he also admits that the chamber should have walked its members through the process of dealing with corporations as massive as the NBA.
“We just thought (tourists) were going to walk into restaurants and spend money,” he said. “You still have to prepare yourself to go after those dollars. As a community at large, we weren’t prepared for that.”
The stakes with FasTracks are much higher, given that $4.7 billion will be spent constructing a 119-mile rail system through metro Denver.
Willis’ primary focus at the chamber is helping members nab some of those contracts. But first, they have to be certified as “disadvantaged business enterprises,” which can cost up to $500 using the help of advisers. Willis has agreed to pay half the cost.
Even before citizens voted on FasTracks last fall, Willis got RTD to sign a memorandum of agreement that gives black businesses a heads-up on jobs related to FasTracks.
It was quite an accomplishment, said Mike Dino, who was an aide to Mayor Wellington Webb and is now senior policy adviser for the Denver office of legal firm Patton Boggs. “It was a brilliant stroke. They got (the signed agreement) before something was actually passed. I’ve never seen that before.”
Willis said, “FasTracks is going to be the economic engine around the Denver metropolitan area for the next 12 years. We want to be able to participate at the front end of the project, versus normally being at either the back end or getting what’s left over.”
He said he expects to leave the chamber after three or four years.
“I would like the opportunity to make a difference again,” Willis said, “not just in the African-American community, but the community at large.”
Staff writer Kimberly S. Johnson can be reached at 303-820-1088 or kjohnson@denverpost.com.
