Dawn Wells is the Senior Director of Supply Chain at Northwell Health. She says that in her work she likes to foreground the words of Maya Angelou, who said that while “people will forget what you said, and people will forget what you did, people will never forget how you made them feel.” This has been her guiding philosophy as she has worked to champion the adoption of an organization-wide supplier diversity policy at Northwell Health, as well as the development of a Supplier Diversity Council to help ensure the enforcement and practice of that policy.
Through her position, she helps the organization understand the best ways to approach and develop contracts with diverse suppliers, helping them to feel seen and heard as they enter into contracts with a much larger organization. In the future, she hopes to be able to integrate this fundamental principle of DEI – seeing and hearing the needs of diverse suppliers – into all channels of her organization, overlapping supplier diversity with health equity and sustainability initiatives as well.
Favorite Quote: “People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” — Maya Angelou