Wade Colclough, Executive Director, Supplier Diversity and Small Business Empowerment-North America teams for Avantor. He counts his top achievements as the achievements of the minority and diverse businesses and people whom he works with and mentors. For example, an MBE firm increased its capabilities to serve life science customers and opened a new 4-story facility, creating jobs in an economically challenged neighborhood. Wade leverages creative supplier diversity solutions for major universities, resulting in local MBE firms hiring from the community. Wade also proudly tells the story of a pre-teen he mentored, who became a supplier diversity professional 20 years later.
At Avantor, Wade and his team develop unique and creative solutions to engage with talented small and diverse firms and align them with Avantor’s unique talents to advance science. He also manages Avantor’s Small Business Empowerment team of North American distributors servicing end users. Wade follows the NMSDC and WBENC best practices, but adds that best practices must do more than increase spend. Supplier diversity professionals should drive new technology and encourage suppliers to learn new ways of advancing their relationship with Procurement and customers.