Michele Thompson is Global Director, Sourcing at Refinitiv, where she works to create mutual value–added relationships with internal customers and suppliers by strategically acquiring goods and services at the best value while mitigating risk.
To establish and grow a supplier diversity program, she first strived to overcome the existing culture by working to minimize unconscious bias and create awareness around diverse suppliers and their capabilities. Michele influenced others through continuous communication, training, and presentation of business cases that showed hard facts. Her process is based on helping individuals become more aware of the value and innovation of diversity and assisting them with making small behavioral changes on a daily basis.
The ability to influence others is one of Michele's leadership strengths. The foundation of her influence is a solid supplier diversity business case that demonstrates its ROI as well as specific cases showing how to sell supplier diversity to the C-suite. She has completed several supplier diversity white papers, making her a thought leader in the diversity space. As a leader, Michele strives for transparency, alignment, openness and understanding of others. She works to maintain self-awareness at all times and is a strong believer in continuous life-long learning.