M/WBE Spotlight: The Wilkinz Group

Mr. Dwayne Wilkins grew up knowing he wanted to create opportunities for businesses and residents of New Jersey. His grandfather was one of the first African American police officers in Montclair, and his grandmother led efforts to enforce compliance with affirmative action in the construction industry. They also played a prominent role in the community and civic life of Essex County—together, these two influences taught him the power of politics from a young age. But while civic duty was part of his upbringing, he did not consider the potential for offshore wind to provide the opportunities he sought for his state until 2022.

A string of events and his extreme curiosity led Mr. Wilkins to the offshore wind industry. As Operations Manager at a small carpentry firm in Newark, Wilkins was eager to help the minority-owned business scale up. Attending a luncheon, he heard leaders from New Jersey’s Governor to Newark’s mayor detail the opportunities for businesses in Atlantic City. A few days later, he received an email from the NJ Economic Development Authority highlighting business opportunities in Atlantic City, specifically in offshore wind. The rest is history.

Within a few months, General Electric selected Mr. Wilkins to attend the Business Network for Offshore Wind’s annual IPF conference in Atlantic City. He had started his own firm—The Wilkinz Group, a Newark-based consulting firm focused on business development and community engagement in underserved communities in NJ. In 2023 he returned to IPF, this time leading a panel.

As Mr. Wilkins sees it, the offshore wind industry provides a “soup of opportunity”: bringing together developers, government agencies, and small businesses who can support these major projects. The industry will need the support of local businesses and their workforces, and cities like Newark are primed to provide exactly the inputs required. Wilkins, a lifelong Newark resident, is keenly aware of all that his state and city have to offer. From colleges like Rutgers and NJ Institute of Technology; to the busiest seaport in the country; to a rich cultural diversity across each neighborhood, Wilkins stands poised to stir this soup and serve up opportunities in Newark and beyond.

When asked about what success looks like for his business, Wilkins barely pauses. For him, it looks like helping other people and creating a healthy ecosystem for the next generation so that they grow up seeing opportunities like those available in the renewable energy sector. Longer term, his dream is even more specific: imagine a rich grandpa sitting on a porch (surely in NJ) and sharing his connections, opportunities, and knowledge with anyone who stops by to ask for help.

At the end of the day, Mr. Wilkins is a connector. As he continues to teach business owners and locals about opportunities to join the emerging offshore wind industry, he will inevitably reach his goal of helping others through the opportunities he opens up. Learn more about Wilkins and his work at thewilkinzgroup.com.

M/WBE Spotlight: L+L

Liz Seibert Turow and Leigh Mignogna in their Brooklyn studio. Photo by @kelseyannrose.

Choosing a design partner is not easy. When it comes to aesthetics, everyone has an opinion on what looks best, but clearly conveying a community and its goals visually takes a lot of skill. L+L, a women-owned design firm, has just that skill. Karp Strategies was lucky enough to work with L+L on a project for Cooper Robertson, Return to the Riverbend, a riverfront master plan for Middletown, Connecticut. It was L+L’s campaign identity that set the look and feel of the engagement materials and final plan.

Becoming L+L

L+L is a multi-disciplinary design studio started in 2015. But their story stretches back to when L+L wasn’t the name of a studio; it was just shorthand for Liz and Leigh, two graduate students completing their coursework at Pratt Institute. As the pair drew closer to earning their degrees and worked the requisite hours together in a studio, they began to consider creating their own firm. Although both designers had existing positions, they each slowly extricated themselves to start L+L.

Today the firm has grown to four employees, with Liz and Leigh each brainstorming, reviewing every project, and bouncing ideas off one another to prevent the type of self-reinforcing feedback that comes from working alone. They view themselves as communicators and translators who help their clients by taking complex ideas and content—and finding a way to visually explain it to their audience. Far beyond artistry, the pair reach out to stakeholders and community members to ensure that their work correctly reflects the communities their deliverables represent and inform.

The duo enjoys tackling diverse projects, from brand and product strategy to user experience and interactive design and everything in between. Still, Liz and Leigh were particularly eager to work with civic design and urban planning organizations. Through The Center for Urban Pedagogy’s (CUP) Public Access Design fellowship—where they made this guide to help people who’d been arrested retrieve their belongings—they gained confidence in their ability to partner with other subject matter experts and realized an interest in working alongside similarly impactful organizations. Soon, they had expanded their work to other socially minded projects, from an online knowledge repository for Code for America to the design of a full brand system for the civic tech nonprofit JustFix.

Get it Back guide created for the Center for Urban Pedagogy.

Creating Middletown, Connecticut’s Riverfront Master Plan

In June 2021, the City of Middletown, Connecticut, selected a consultant team led by Cooper Robertson (and supported by Karp Strategies and Langan) to help create a riverfront master plan. From the start, the City saw this undertaking as an exciting opportunity to reverse the impacts of urban renewal, support forward-thinking economic growth, and build a new waterfront grounded in the goals and needs of local Middletown stakeholders. To inform the plan, Karp Strategies led a market analysis, economic development analysis and strategy, and thorough community engagement.

L+L created a set of brand guidelines and design templates to clearly articulate the thoughts and feelings of the community and the future they envisioned. Cooper Robertson then took all of the analysis and input—including over 1,200 stakeholder comments—and transformed it into the beautiful and inspiring plan that exists today. The final plan reimagines a 200-acre stretch of land along the Connecticut River as vibrant and accessible new city districts with significant open spaces and a broad mix of uses. The plan includes photographs, graphics, maps, and even images of sticky note comments from community engagement meetings, all laid out in an easily digestible format.

Detail of Return to the Riverbend Master Plan.

To learn more about L+L, visit their website or on Instagram or reach out at shoutout@landl.us to sign up for their newsletter.