In honor of its 10-year anniversary, GMSDC Radio welcomed Donna Ennis of the Minority Business Development Agency (MBDA) Business Center – Atlanta to the studio. As a federal program of the U.S. Department of Commerce and Georgia Tech’s Enterprise Innovation Institute, as well as, a strategic partner to the GMSDC’s Mentor Protégé Connection program—you’ll want to tune in as Ennis elaborates on the new direction of the MBDA Center and shares the MBDA’s take on the state of small business today.
Donna Ennis / MBDA Business Center – Atlanta 
Donna Ennis, C.P.F is the project director for the MBDA Business Center – Atlanta located at Georgia Tech’s Enterprise Innovation Institute (EI2). Funded by the Department of Commerce Minority Business Development Agency (MBDA), the MBDA Business Center’s mission is to grow and strengthen Minority Business Enterprises (MBEs).
A Certified Professional Facilitator, Donna is responsible for the strategic direction, marketing, outreach, and operations for the Center and provides assistance to Center clients in strategic, business and market planning; private and public procurement, finance, operations and business process improvement. Under her leadership, the Center has assisted MBEs in generating over $1 billion in contracts, financing, and sales and creating more than 4,000 jobs.
Donna has more than 30 years of experience in marketing, communications, public relations, program management, and business development with an emphasis on identifying company needs and matching those needs to the appropriate resources. As the former manager of product marketing and program services for EI2, she directed the marketing strategies and activities for EI2’s Center for International Standards & Quality, Lean Enterprise Services, and the Energy and Environmental Management Center. Trained as a lead auditor for ISO 9001, she helped companies determine their business process improvement needs and provided specific direction for clients who implemented management systems and lean techniques as part of their business strategies.
Donna received her Master of Public Administration from Georgia State University and a B.S. in communications from Boston University. She is an awardee of the 2011 Georgia Tech Women Out Front program and has been named one of Atlanta’s Top 100 Black Women of Influence by the Atlanta Business League. Donna is the Chair of the Board of Directors for the National Center for the Prevention of Home Improvement Fraud and a former member of the Board of Trustees of Atlanta Unity Church. A native of Washington, D.C., she is the proud mother of daughter Adenike Makinde.
