Our Mission
At Griffin & Strong we strive to empower and build up communities. Through quality legal representation and consultative expertise, our diverse team of experts are here to guide you every step of the way to success. We believe that we are stronger together, and together we can ensure an equal opportunity for all.
It all started with a vision for economic equality.
Rodney K. Strong, co-founder of Griffin & Strong, was thirteen years old when the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke in his hometown of Memphis, saying:
“Now our struggle is for genuine equality, which means economic equality…[I]t isn’t enough to integrate lunch counters. What does it profit a man to be able to eat at an integrated lunch counter if he doesn’t have enough money to buy a hamburger?”
Carrying that vision with him to King’s alma mater Morehouse College, Strong dreamed of ways to put policy to work for disadvantaged communities.
He saw his chance in 1984 when he became the Director of Contract Compliance for the City of Atlanta’s minority business program. Strong, with the backing of Mayor Andrew Young and, eventually, Mayor Maynard Jackson, assembled a team of lawyers, economists, and statisticians to construct Atlanta’s response to the City of Richmond v. JA Croson— a Supreme Court case that threatened to shutter MBE programs across the country.
An attorney himself, Strong was certain that the response— titled the “Brimmer-Marshall Study” after the economists who conducted it—would ensure that Atlanta’s program would survive legal scrutiny under the new guidelines of the Supreme Court. It became Atlanta’s first-ever disparity study, and one of the first to be completed in the nation. The Brimmer-Marshall Study also gave birth to the city’s Equal Business Opportunity program, which is still advocating for small, minority and women-owned businesses today.
Strong, alongside fellow attorney and compliance expert Delmarie Griffin, would go on to complete studies for jurisdictions across the country, leading teams of experts in law, economics, policy, and data science to replicate Atlanta’s success. For more than 30 years, GSPC has been at the forefront of policy design and implementation for public sector entities and has provided supplier diversity solutions for major corporations and expert recommendations for non-profit entities. Griffin & Strong remains committed to is core values of integrity, transparency and service as our team works to help leaders and communities build a more equitable future.