Ashley Gabb, Director of Supplier Inclusion and Diversity for The Estée Lauder Companies (ELC), believes a successful supplier diversity program is one that creates a culture where employees can actively contribute to economically growing diverse and small suppliers. Her strategy in implementing a successful program at ELC involves fully integrating supplier inclusion and diversity into the Global Procurement strategy. This approach has resulted in ELC’s brands, regions and functions creating their own supplier inclusion and diversity goals and initiatives.
Ashley also credits the new program’s accelerated success to ELC’s top-down support. Her partnership with executive leaders has helped position ELC as one of the few prestige beauty companies that is making and exceeding their public commitments in this space. The progress on the program is reported publicly in the annual Social Impact & Sustainability Report to drive more transparency and accountability in the industry.