This Women's Network event will offer an insightful conversation with Dr. Melissa Gilliam, the 11th President of Boston University and both the first woman and the first Black woman to lead the institution since its founding in 1869.
06/18/2025
11:30am - 1:00pm
Fairmont Copley Plaza
Join the Chamber and Massachusetts Business Roundtable for a deep dive into employer insights, featuring analysis from McKinsey and a panel of experts.
06/26/2025
11:00am - 12:00pm
Virtual
Join us for our installment of the Pacesetters Doing Business series featuring Mass General Brigham on June 26, 2025.
1:00pm - 2:00pm
This program is in redevelopment. Click this page for DEI resources.
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On June 13, the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce’s Pacesetters Program hosted its third annual Supplier Diversity Awards ceremony, celebrating leaders in the Pacesetters network who are improving supplier diversity in their companies and throughout Greater Boston.
The awards recognize growth in spend, innovative procurement practices, and overall commitment to creating economic opportunities in the business community. In addition to the awards ceremony, attendees learned about the results from the 2023 Annual Pacesetters Report and heard from Champion of the Year, David Cho:
I am just extremely honored to be here and represent the efforts of the University of Massachusetts. I’d love to start by sharing a timeline: I started at UMass September of 2019, I came from the private sector serving Blackrock as Chief procurement officer, but getting this opportunity to work with a group of just outstanding professionals at UMass to launch this brand-new procurement shared services organization bottom up is an opportunity of a lifetime.
Within 3 days of starting my role, I joined President Meehan at a Pacesetters meeting. Nine days later, I had my first campus engagement. This was at UMass Boston where I was asked to provide a view of the vision of what this procurement platform would look like. And during that time, I shared a little bit more about my personal story. I was born in Lynn Massachusetts, and my parents, one of their very first business was actually in Roxbury, and they sold wigs and hair extensions. They were embraced by the community. My father is now 88 years old and looks at me with quite a lot of disappointment because I can’t retain my own hair while I’m at this point.
10 months later, we released our first set of supplier diversity numbers. And President Meehan shared, and I quote “while we have just launched our procurement platform, about 5-6% of our prime supplier expenditures is categorized as ‘diverse’. But we have announced that improving supplier diversity is going to be a higher priority for UMass going forward.” Now we go to 1 year and 3 months later, president Meehan and I cosigned the pacesetters program commitment letter, the commitment letter said a list of obligations that members will hold themselves accountable to promote supplier diversity- I’m going to say SD, at their respective organizations. The following month after that we held a fireside chat with the pacesetters organization to share our view of what procurement practices could work to elevate SD, our view of what good looks like. Now it’s still up on the website and I’m happy to share that many of those practices we talked about, we rolled out.
UMass then updated its procurement policy soon after, redefining the definition of ‘value’ so that the University determines which suppliers we would like to institutionalize partnerships with, that we’re not just looking at the traditional aspects of price, access to and quality of goods and services, but supplier diversity is considered in that definition. It sounds simple, but updating the policy and announcing to our constituents that supplier diversity officially matters as part of the math in evaluating potential partners, was subtle but extremely powerful at UMass.
So now we fast forward to today. When we launched this program we were at about 5.5%. Last fiscal school year we went to 9.9%. Last quarter 11% diverse spend which essentially means UMass has doubled its supplier diversity spend in the past 5 years- less than 5 years. That’s tremendous movement. I’m glad you see that too. You know for an institution that spends over $1B per annum, there’s still more upside from my personal point of view.
And I want to highlight a few things about the timeline I just shared with you. If you noticed, there was tremendous top-down support. President Meehan invited me to join Pacesetters on my 3rd day at UMass, when I didn’t even know how to find my office correctly. And yet, it was a critical career moment for me at UMass because to hear him present his resolve and dedication to the cause. This was not just some fad or temporary trend. His voice empowered me knowing that this is a personal motive of mine that is now an institutional one for Umass. And President Meehan was supporting this not just because not that it is was a government mandate but simply the right thing to do.
My manager, Lisa Calise, who’s the University System CFO, she echoed the sentiment. She didn’t ask whether supplier diversity was important – she just said “what do you need?” And it was never a question of whether we should do this or not, but how. This was powerful for me to see and feel this because it reinforces my own personal resolve to cascade that same sentiment and confidence to my broader team that the University has your back, and you can confidently dedicate headspace, creativity, cycles to achieve the supplier diversity outcomes that UMass is striving for.
The team, this team, that I am absolutely blessed to work with, has executed on promoting supplier diversity to that cause with a passion, and dedication, conviction as if it was a primary day job. SD requirements were built into contracts, competitive processes, and supplier diversity themes were broadcasted loud and proud. There were hundreds of people at a time at the sessions. They not only learned how we’re going to roll out SD initiatives but why. So this award is a recognition for this remarkable UMass team that encompasses everyone from certainly procurement, but our office of general council, our IT, academic affairs, across administration and finance and our campus partners. In other words, it takes a flippin’ village once our leadership made are called to action.
Even some of our largest publicly traded companies are also re-investing in the UMass Mission. Companies like CDW and Connection: they’ve agreed, for example, to target 20 cents on every UMass dollar to be deployed to diverse suppliers across their supply chain and subcontractor pool for goods and services. And I want to be specific, we actually said to these partners that we want to prioritize Black, Brown, Veteran, and Women-owned businesses based out of the Commonwealth and New England – That specific, that prescriptive. We hit 13% so far, and by the way, those numbers, that I’m just talking to you about tier 2, they’re not even included in that 11%, so we got some really good momentum going.
So what’s the future look like? For the past 2 years, the top category across diverse suppliers, we have onboarded our minority owned accounting for almost 1/3rd of new diverse partners, but again, there’s definitely more upside potential.
So 3 themes I want to talk to you about that I believe is coming from UMass:
One, ESG integration. Instead of supplier diversity competing with sustainability initiatives, there are synergies across resources, data, tech, processes, and impact. I believe promoting supplier diversity can complement broader causes that are not only commercially pragmatic but promote doing the right thing. Since the procurement platform launched in 2020, as President Meehan just mentioned, UMass has saved now as of last month about $130M, yet increased supplier diversity. Again, we can be commercially sensible, and efficient, and do the right thing. Those 2 things are not mutually exclusive.
Second, more visible partnerships, partnerships at UMass that grow Tier 2 programs like that CDW example and contract specific opportunities, they’re gonna continue to flourish. Our peers such as Framingham State, Harvard, Tufts, over two dozen municipalities have already started to utilize the same contracts that UMass developed to promote these tier 2 programs so now they can tweak their buying to promote diverse spend outcomes.
The third is looking even beyond the spend metrics. We are seeing the impact on diverse suppliers and their communities, and there’s even more upside in nurturing relationships with diverse suppliers to build their capacity, visibility, and participation. We are releasing some best practices that will show potential partners how to become certified and will be host more events that provide diverse suppliers more looks. So we recently finished this competitive process that targeted smaller, diverse professional service firms – just closed this out. When we released the RFP, we had over 50 suppliers raise their hand to express their intent to bid, that were diverse. An incredible response of potential partners that want a shot of obtaining a contract at UMass. As of last Friday, 76% of those respondents shared that they were diverse.
So obtaining contracts is a form of obtaining access to economic empowerment, where owners from historically underrepresented communities can obtain the tools, the IP, the encouragement that they are wanted and needed. That’s where UMass is headed. I’m proud to stand here with this absolutely amazing community. I’m grateful to accept this award on behalf of the University of Massachusetts. Thank you for the Pacesetters organization that has partnered with us along the way and I have so much gratitude to everyone here for all you do. Both seen and unseen to move that supplier diversity needle. Thank you very much.
The Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce would like to thank our Pacesetters sponsor, Eastern Bank, for their continued support.
To learn more about the Pacesetters Program, email Amber Haskell and sign up for our monthly newsletter!
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