Staring out at the Sandia Mountain range in the Albuquerque foothills, David Wiegand couldn’t help but appreciate the unlikely path that brought him to the precipice of the most important decision of his life. Here was Wiegand, who was born on an Army base in Louisiana and grew up mostly in Saudi Arabia, deciding to embrace a city that wasn’t his hometown and a Native American culture that was an...

Today, the Minority Business Development Agency (MBDA) within the Department of Commerce launched a search for innovative ideas to benefit minority-owned businesses, from projects that increase access to capital to resources that increase disaster preparedness and relief. MBDA’s Broad Agency Announcement (BAA) is designed to solicit proposals that will positively impact minority-owned businesses...

Finding and harvesting sea cucumbers takes some effort. These bottom-feeding creatures – affectionately dubbed the “janitors of the ocean” by Popular Science – aren’t the prettiest fish in the sea. But they are increasingly among the most coveted, and well worth the sea-scraping exploration. The founders of Mellish Island, a San Dimas, California-based processor of sea cucumbers, recognized the...