Michael Humphrey leads Greensboro’s push to boost small business contracts

At Barber Park, Greensboro is trying to do something that usually happens quietly behind bid tabs and vendor lists: move more small firms into city contracts. Michael Humphrey, who has led the city’s Office of Business Opportunity since April 2025, is now the public face of that push.

The city launched its Small Business Enterprise Program in May 2026 as a race- and gender-neutral certification initiative. A kickoff event is scheduled for May 19, 2026, from 9 to 10:30 a.m. at the Yvonne J. Johnson Event Center at Barber Park, 1502 Barber Park Dr. Greensboro says the program is open to qualifying businesses in Guilford, Randolph and Rockingham counties, and certified firms may be added to the city’s vendor directory and receive notices about contracting opportunities.

That matters because the program is not just branding. North Carolina Session Law 2022-35, enacted July 1, 2022, gave Greensboro the authority to establish a small business enterprise program, set subcontracting goals, require good-faith efforts and consider compliance when awarding city contracts. In practical terms, the city now has a legal structure meant to make it easier for smaller local companies to compete for public work.

Humphrey’s background fits that mission. A Greensboro native, he grew up around the city’s entrepreneurial energy and later studied industrial technology at NC A&T State University. He worked at Stockhausen and then Konica Minolta Photo Imaging, where he trained in Japan before starting a home-based art business. Wanting deeper business knowledge, he earned an MBA at Wake Forest University and moved to New York City, where he spent 14 years in the National Football League’s special events and minority supplier development work.

That experience is relevant in Greensboro, where city leaders are leaning on Humphrey to connect downtown business activity with broader contracting opportunities. His work is tied to access, procurement and vendor pipelines, not ceremonial outreach. The city’s goal, as it frames the effort, is to help businesses do business “with the City, in the City.”

The broader local network around him includes the Greensboro Area Chamber of Commerce, the Nussbaum Center for Entrepreneurship, downtown restaurants and neighborhood businesses, along with nearby community colleges. Guilford County has its own Small Business and Entrepreneurship Department, which says it advocates for small businesses and works to provide equal access to county contracting and procurement opportunities in professional services, goods and services, and construction.

For Greensboro merchants and contractors, the signal is clear: the city is trying to widen the circle of firms that can see, bid on and win public work. Humphrey’s role is to turn those connections into contracts.