Jana Williams is an Assistant Procurement Officer for the City of Chicago’s Department of Procurement Services’ (“DPS”) Design and Construction Unit. In her capacity as an Assistant Procurement Officer, Ms. Williams manages the procurement activities of hundreds of active agreements for City infrastructure departments with a five-year contractual amount of approximately $1,000,000,000 and works in contract administration to ensure the equitable acquisition of goods and services for the City of Chicago. Key initiatives of the Design and Construction Unit are promoting the DPS’ efforts to increase contracting opportunities from diverse suppliers and increasing participation in contracting opportunities by Disadvantaged-Owned Business Enterprises (DBE), Minority-Owned Business Enterprises (MBE), Woman-Owned Business Enterprises (WBE), and Veteran-Owned Business Enterprises. The Design and Construction Unit also works to increase contracting opportunities for all small businesses through the Small Business Initiative (SBI) Construction Program and the Mid-Sized Business Initiative (MBI) Construction Program with the overall goal is to ensure the City’s vendor pool reflects the rich diversity of its neighborhoods.

Ms. Williams has been with the City of Chicago for 10 years and has served in a variety of roles. She previously worked as a Senior Procurement Specialist for the Professional Services Unit at DPS and worked as a Field Analyst for DPS’s Compliance and Certification Units auditing the functionality, legitimacy and appropriateness of certified DBE, MBE, and WBE firms and worked to ensure certified firms were effectively utilized by prime contractors.