"Access to capital and bonding is the MWDBE’s greatest hurdle to sustainability and growth. It is a national societal issue that needs solving."- David

Born in Haiti, the western hemisphere’s poor country, David Cayemitte’s parents enshrined in him the critical importance of “you must always find a way”. Like many immigrants, the Cayemitte family landed in NY with pennies in hand. In four years, the family was living in a four-bedroom home in Long Island.

Today, David carries his family mantra at C5 Inc. The lack of MWDBE participation in construction in the US is a crisis. There are many reasons why emerging contractors are not realizing their fair share of projects, but a key is the inability to access capital. This root issue, particularly in construction, has created an insurmountable inequity. Even while the demographics are set to change with minorities moving towards becoming the new majority, few lending institutions provide access to capital to MWDBEs. In response, Mr. Cayemitte has created innovative approaches to orchestrate and craft solutions that empower MWDBE’s to access the capital they need to participate in Americas’ infrastructure development projects.

Trained as a surety underwriter, David has designed solutions that mitigate or reduce the MWBE contractors’ risk profiles to incentivize sureties to offer bonding and lenders to provide affordable access to capital. Mr. Cayemitte launched two products: Cayemitte Construction Management, with its Cradle-to-Grave construction management process that assures that work in the field is performed up to industry standards, and Cayemitte Capital Management, which manages project finances including payment of all project expenses, provides transparent reporting, and teaches the skills needed for contractors to move toward financial independence.  Cayemitte Capital Management facilitates access to capital while reducing risk to prime contractors, surety and insurance underwriters and project owners.

David has come full circle with his efforts leading his team back to his homeland – Haiti. David’s team has provided the International Finance Corporation, a part of the World Bank, with a feasibility study to design/build a surety bond platform that would help local Haitian contractors to participate in the country’s billions of dollars of reconstruction projects. Today, large contractors come in from the all over the world to manage these projects, and then they take their profits out of Haiti rather than invigorating the local economy. Helping Haitian contractors to participate on projects will help to change to a system that is entrenched with many deep systemic issues.  The Haitian construction market presents a complex and multi-faceted puzzle, but a solution is on its way!