Valencia Stoudamire, Vice President, Supplier Diversity for Henry Ford Health, is working to further enhance the company’s successful supplier diversity program by implementing a strategy with deliberate goals and tactics. With Supplier Diversity already a component of the organization’s Diversity, Equity, Inclusion & Social Justice plan, Valencia understands that collaboration with internal Supplier Diversity Champions across the organization, as well as the Strategic Sourcing team, is vitally important. Additionally, strategic partnerships with local and national supplier diversity advocacy organizations, and the ability to report and disaggregate data by diversity category, is critical.
Valencia firmly believes that data is pivotal to the process. The team has established key metrics to align with the goals and has partnered with the internal Supply Chain Systems team to develop a Supplier Diversity performance dashboard with the ability to filter on those metrics and generate reports. Additionally, they collaborate with an external partner to support the tier two spend data collection process and the Supplier Diversity portal used to identify suppliers for participation in sourcing events.
Senior-level prioritization has enabled garnering the necessary internal and external support. Valencia credits top-down advocacy; active engagement with internal and external stakeholders; and the intentional inclusion of diverse suppliers in the strategic sourcing process as essential to the success of Henry Ford Health’s Supplier Diversity strategy.