New Boston firm acts as ‘translator’ for corporate buyers, minority vendors
Conscious Customers principals (from left to right) Art Velasquez, Izzy Jacques, Gloria Velasquez and Andy Tarsy. Image: Imagix Studio
This article is available in Spanish in partnership with El Planeta Media. Este informe está disponible en español, traducido por El Planeta Media.
The Alliance for Business Leadership’s former president, a former WeWork manager in Boston and two colleagues have launched a consulting firm to help connect companies with Black- and Latinx-owned vendors and suppliers.
Conscious Customers, as the firm is known, is getting its start just as companies try to figure out how to match the statements they have made in support of Black Lives Matter in recent months with concrete action on diversity and inclusion insides of their businesses.
“We act as this intermediary and translator between the Black and Latinx businesses and the larger companies,” said Izzy Jacques, one of the new firm’s principals.
Other principals include Andy Tarsy, who co-founded the liberal business group The Alliance for Business Leadership and has served in leadership roles with the Anti-Defamation League and the Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the United States Senate. More recently, he’s run his own social impact consulting firm, Emblem Strategic.
Joining with him are Jacques, most recently business program manager for diversity, equity and inclusion at WeWork, as well as Gloria and Art Velasquez, co-owners of the Boston design & photography creative firm Imagix Studio.