Karen Cole and her risk-management consulting company, Assura, have been working with Virginia agencies for seven years. But she still gets questions that make her furious.

“You get people who say, ‘you can’t possibly be running the company. Is it your husband who really runs it?’” she recalls.

That’s far from the truth, of course. Cole serves as Assura’s CEO. She’s a national speaker on topics like business continuity, disaster management and enterprise risk management, as well as a board member of the Virginia Emergency Management Association. Before starting Assura she was senior manager in charge of disaster recovery at Capital One.

In July 2011 Virginia’s Department of Minority Business Enterprise received an exhaustive study on the amount of state contracts won by women-owned and minority-owned businesses. The study found that around 3 percent of the contracts went to small companies owned by women or minorities, and that those businesses were often not provided equal opportunity to bid on contracts.

Cole is now leading female business owners in a lobbying effort to secure passage of Senate Bill 651, which would direct Gov. Bob McDonnell and state agencies to set up programs that ensure the state’s various departments consider women-owned or minority-owned businesses when issuing state contracts.

The bill, which passed the Senate by a 23-17 vote earlier this month and is now before a House of Delegates subcommittee, does not mandate what percentage of an agency’s contracts should go to these small, women- and minority-owned companies (known as SWAM businesses in federal contracting parlance).

“The bill directs the governor to come up with narrowly-tailored remedies for the problem,” said Sen. Donald A. McEachin, D-Henrico and author of the bill. “It doesn’t tell him how to do so.”

McEachin said it may make sense for the state to emulate certain federal procurement programs designed to increase the number of contracts awarded to SWAM businesses. But he said federal programs don’t necessarily have to serve as a model for Virginia.

Cole said the current state law merely encourages Virginia agencies to set a utilization target for SWAM businesses. She wants those programs to be required.

The bill is also backed by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, which organized a Feb. 13 rally in support of the bill. The NAACP’s Virginia executive director, King Salim Khalfani, said minority- and women-owned businesses need a share of the state contracts awarded each year.

Cole and McEachin both said it’s too early to tell how the bill will fare in the House of Delegates, where Republicans enjoy an overwhelming majority. The bill got support from all 20 Democrats in the Senate. They were joined by three Republicans: Sen. Frank M. Ruff of Mecklenburg, Sen. William M. Stanley, Jr. of Franklin County and Sen. Jill Holtzman Vogel of Fauquier. The remaining 17 Senate Republicans voted against the measure.

McEachin said he discussed the concept of the bill with McDonnell before the session, but the senator noted that the discussion occurred before the bill had been drafted.

Cole spent last week rounding up business owners to travel to the Capitol when the bill is debated in a House subcommittee. She said Assura would cover the cost of the buses.