The Runway Towards Systemic Opportunity

Pacesetters: For MBEs

What our Pacesetter Companies Seek in Diverse Vendors

Top Sourcing

• IT
• Trades
• Marketing
• General Contracting

Requirements

• Insurance
• Risk Control
• Financial Review
• Background Check

Certification

• 100% track certification
• 75% require certification from a third-party source

Watch Past Doing Business Webinars

Our Doing Business with... webinars give MBEs the chance to learn directly from procurement officers at Pacesetter corporations.

Doing Business Webinar Summaries

Berkshire Bank

Berkshire Bank understands the importance of a diverse third-party base as partners in the achievement of their operational goals. They are committed to fostering relationships with qualified, and when available, diverse third parties. Berkshire Bank, to the maximum extent possible, ensures the fair inclusion and utilization of minority-owned, women-owned, and traditionally under-represented third parties in our procurement of products and services. They encourage their employees to seek out third parties who operate in a manner consistent with their Be FIRST values and Third-Party Responsible Business Principles outlined in the Responsible & Sustainable Business Policy.

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Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts

The Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts Supplier Diversity Program encourages competition in their procurement process and promotes economic health in the communities they serve.

To support the growth of diverse business enterprises, the Supplier Diversity Program emphasizes the following practices:

Inclusion—Developing policies that infuse supplier diversity into all stages of the procurement process. For example, at least one diverse business must compete in all bids or request for proposals (RFPs).

Strategic Sourcing—Identify certified Minority, Women, Veteran, or LGBT-owned businesses and verifying that they have the experience and expertise to satisfy our business needs.

Business Development—Providing minority and women-owned businesses access to mentors and consultants skilled at positioning small companies to effectively compete for contracts with large corporations.

Tier 2—Encouraging our network of consultants, contactors, and suppliers to make good faith efforts to subcontract certified Minority, Women, Veteran, or LGBT-owned businesses.

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Boston Children's Hospital

Boston Children's Hospital is fully committed to providing equal opportunity to all qualified diverse suppliers to compete and participate in the sourcing and procurement process, subject to the established policies and procedures. Boston Children's Hospital will facilitate tangible contract opportunities that will mutually add value to the hospital, their stakeholders, and the businesses that participate in their program. Boston Children's Hospital's procurement strategy is essential to supporting their mission.

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Boston Planning and Development Agency

The Boston Planning and Development Agency sees the significant importance of diversifying their spending with MBE-owned businesses and have created the Equitable Procurement Plan to ensure the full participation of all business enterprises, particularly M/WBEs. The Equitable Procurement Plan (EPP) is a collection of measures and procedural changes designed to address the barriers that keep minority- and women-owned business enterprises from participating in BPDA contracting opportunities. As the planning and development agency for the City of Boston, the BPDA knows they have a significant impact on shaping the city and believes these initiatives will allow the city to grow by building and investing in a more diverse workforce.

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Boston Red Sox

The Boston Red Sox are committed to providing the maximum practical opportunity to diverse businesses as we evaluate potential providers of goods and services. The Boston Red Sox Supplier Registration Portal will facilitate the sourcing of potential diverse suppliers by providing The Boston Red Sox buyers with on-line access to detailed supplier capability profiles.

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Comcast

Comcast NBCUniversal’s supplier diversity program offers every business, regardless of ownership or size, an opportunity to compete for business within our company. It is designed to promote, increase, and improve the participation of small and diversity-owned businesses in their supply chain. Additionally, they create economic opportunities more broadly across the supplier ecosystem via subcontracting. Comcast NBCUniversal understands diversity is the foundation for innovation.

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Commonwealth of MA Supplier Diversity Office

The SDO’s mission is to promote diversity, equity, and inclusion in state contracting for businesses owned by minorities, women, Portuguese, veterans, service-disabled veterans, those with a disability, and LGBT individuals, as well as small Massachusetts businesses. The SDO certifies these businesses and manages several programs that help them enhance their marketability when bidding on public contracts.

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Eastern Bank

Eastern Bank’s commitment to inclusion is to approach business challenges by involving all relevant partners, enabling unique perspectives, and fostering effective communication. Eastern Bank knows that the strength behind the company is the diverse background and perspectives of its people. They believe that a team of people with different perspectives can have a richer discussion, consider more and different ideas, and have greater success at solving complex problems than a group of people who all come from the same perspective.

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Encore Boston Harbor Hotel

Encore Boston Harbor in Everett, Massachusetts is a $2.5 billion Five-Star global destination gaming resort that features 671 hotel rooms with sweeping views of the Boston skyline and Boston Harbor, an ultra-premium spa, specialty retail, award-winning dining, and state-of-the-art ballroom and meeting spaces. The three-million square foot resort is the largest private single-phase development in the history of the Commonwealth.

Encore is working to actively support and engage an inclusive supplier base. Their Supplier Diversity Program was created to help them connect with minority-, women-, and veteran-owned businesses around the globe.
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Fidelity

Fidelity believes diversity is a business imperative. In today’s rapidly changing landscape, consumers, suppliers, and businesses represent diverse backgrounds, experiences, and values. As a customer obsessed company, Fidelity believes their suppliers should reflect that.

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Gilbane

Gilbane encourages Small Business Enterprise (SBE), Minority Business Enterprise (MBE) and Woman-owned Business Enterprise (WBE) participation on all their projects – regardless of funding requirements. Local business involvement is maximized without sacrificing quality, time, or cost. Gilbane makes this team effort happen by working closely with each owner to establish local inclusion goals within each their building program.

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John Hancock

John Hancock places importance on maintaining a diverse supplier base that provides a broad range of perspectives, skills, and experiences, in addition to quality and cost effectiveness. As part of their commitment, John Hancock is a member of the Women’s Business Enterprise National Council (WBENC), Greater New England Minority Supplier Development Council (GNEMSDC), Pacesetters (part of the Boston Chamber of Commerce), National Veteran-Owned Business Association (NaVOBA), Disability: IN and the National Gay & Lesbian Chamber of Commerce (NGLCC). John Hancock’s diverse supplier base recognizes the importance of businesses owned by minorities, women, LGBT, people with disabilities, veterans, and service-disabled veterans.

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Liberty Mutual

Liberty Mutual is working to actively support and engage an inclusive supplier base. Liberty Mutual understands that diversity is multifaceted, extending beyond gender and ethnicity. Their Supplier Diversity Program was created to help connect with minority-, women-, LGBTQ+-, disabled and veteran-owned businesses around the globe. Liberty Mutual leverages this program to promote more innovative thinking, increase collaboration and yield stronger business results.

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MassDevelopment

MassDevelopment, the state’s development finance agency and land bank, works with businesses, nonprofits, banks, and communities to stimulate economic growth. Through these collaborations MassDevelopment helps create jobs, increase the number of housing units, revitalize urban environments, and address factors limiting economic growth including transportation, energy, and infrastructure deficiencies.

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Mass General Brigham

Created in 2004, Mass General Brigham’s Supplier Diversity Program was established to extend their mission of community outreach and involve an increasingly more diverse group of suppliers to participate in procurement.

By diversifying the supply base, Mass General Brigham connects with an emerging market and give back to the communities in which they operate.

With more than 3,000 certified/categorized historically under-served businesses, Mass General Brigham is a leader in supplier diversity initiatives and has received multiple supplier diversity awards.

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National Grid

As a responsible business partner and active community participant, National Grid views supplier diversity as not just an internal corporate priority and policy but as an external priority to be supported and embedded in our communities. Diversifying supply chain plays an important role in carrying out their core mission and delivering on their purpose. National Grid seeks to ensure that they support the communities they serve by acknowledging and addressing the economic and social concerns confronting them especially in today’s uncertain and challenging climate.

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Watch the Video (Part II)
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Northeastern University

Founded in 1898, Northeastern University is a global research university and the recognized leader in experience-driven lifelong learning. By building strong research institutes and programs, Northeastern is focused on global challenges in health, security, and sustainability. Their world-renowned experiential approach empowers our students, faculty, alumni, and partners to create impact far beyond the confines of discipline, degree, and campus. Their physical locations in Massachusetts and other cities across the United States, Canada, and United Kingdom are nodes in our growing global university system. Through this network, they expand opportunities for flexible, student-centered learning and collaborative, solutions focused research. Northeastern’s comprehensive array of undergraduate and graduate programs lead to multi-discipline degrees through the doctorate level, specifically designed to prepare students for purposeful lives and careers.

Planning, Real Estate and Facilities (PREF) is a service-oriented organization whose mission is to be the most progressive and efficient organization that, through specialized expertise, innovation, and teamwork, maximizes the potential for Northeastern to achieve its goals. We are responsible for maintaining and improving Northeastern’s facilities and grounds; promoting an attractive safe, clean, and sustainable campus environment. Through their efforts, they help Northeastern accomplish its goals and aspirations to advance itself and remain a leader in global experiential learning.

P&G Gillette

P&G’s Supplier Diversity efforts began in 1976 and began a formal 2nd Tier program in 1996. Since 2007, P&G spends more than $2 billion with diverse-owned businesses every year. And in FY20/21 P&G surpassed $3 billion globally for the first time. Given this high level of achievement P&G is a member of the Billion Dollar Roundtable, a forum of companies spending more than $1 billion annually with diverse suppliers.

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Point32Health

Point32Health is a non-profit health and wellbeing company. They cover a broad range of health plans and tools to help people navigate the healthcare landscape easily.

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Additional Business Support Organizations

Amplify Latinx
Amply Latinx seeks to be a leading voice and advocate for Latinx communities across Massachusetts by building a diverse, unified and powerful coalition of Latinx leaders and partner organizations.

Offerings:

Powerup Latino business advancement program: a free program for personalized counseling, networking, and business analysis.

Learn More

Boston Impact Initiative
Boston Impact Initiative (BII) is a nonprofit impact investing fund working to build financial, social and political power for entrepreneurs of color. We do this by investing in the people, places and social enterprises that share our vision of an equitable economy and need access to catalytic, integrated capital.

Offerings:

Invests in MWBEs across Boston, including impact investing for small businesses.

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Commonwealth Kitchen
Provides professional development and workforce training, youth employment opportunities, and supports diverse entrepreneurs in the food industry.

Offerings:

Provides a shared kitchen space and co-manufacturing facility

Retail accelerators

14 week program to guide food businesses

SHIFT fellowship

Startup classes and Santander small business classes.

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Center for Women & Enterprise
The Center for Women & Enterprise is a nationally known nonprofit organization dedicated to helping people start and grow their businesses.

Offerings:

Helps women entrepreneurs and business owners to launch and grow these businesses by providing access to resources, tools, and support, business conferences/summits, consulting, courses, workshops, and certification.

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Foundation for Business Equity
Launched in 2017, the Foundation for Business Equity (FBE) starts with the unique needs of each business and digs deeper to support the business owner while also strengthening the entrepreneurial ecosystem to provide the essential tools required to drive revenue growth.

Offerings:

Peer-to-peer support

Business equity CEO roundtable

Direct services specialist

Mentoring with strategic advisors

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Greater New England Minority Supplier Development Council
The Greater New England Minority Supplier Development Council (GNEMSDC) advances business opportunities for certified Asian, Black, Hispanic and Native American business enterprises and connects them to corporate members.

Offerings:

One-one consulting and training

Advanced leadership program

Business webinars and certification

Develops supplier diversity programs

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ICIC
Initiative for a Competitive Inner City (ICIC) drives inclusive economic prosperity in under-resourced communities through innovative research and programs to create jobs, income, and wealth for local residents.

Offerings:

Conducts research on the business climate in Greater Boston

Small business initiative focused on supporting MWBEs

Inner city 100

Capital connections (tuition free executive leadership)

One-one coaching

10,000 small businesses Program

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Interise
Interise achieves their mission through purposeful research that turns insights into actions; bold programs that close gaps in business knowledge, know how and networks; and national partnerships that create impact at local, regional, and state-wide levels.

Offerings:

Lends MBES capital necessary for procurement

Streetwise-education program for small business owners

Accelerate Latinx: supports Latinx business owners with business development

"Grow my people" training for hiring, writing job descriptions, creating management systems and training

LEAP-teaches procurement processes

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LISC Boston
As part of a national organization with deep local roots, LISC Boston is uniquely positioned to share resources, best practices, and innovations with the communities we serve. We provide funding, financing, and technical assistance to community development corporations (CDCs), nonprofit developers, grassroots organizations, as well as policy and advocacy organizations throughout Massachusetts.

Offerings:

Digital Growth Accelerator: consulting program with digital tools for businesses, small business support including micro loans and impact investing.

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Massachusetts Supplier Diversity Office
The SDO's goals are to increase opportunities for certified businesses and Small Business Purchasing Program (SBPP) participants through annual state agency spending benchmarks and include bid evaluation criteria within the state goods and services bid process. The SDO also provides public access to the certified business lists on the SDO web pages and distributes business opportunity events and notices to SDO participants.

Offerings:

Certifies businesses owned by MWBEs

Small Business Association
The U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) continues to help small business owners and entrepreneurs pursue the American dream. SBA is the only cabinet-level federal agency fully dedicated to small business and provides counseling, capital, and contracting expertise as the nation’s only go-to resource and voice for small businesses.

Offerings

Provides business support, grant resources, and an online business guide

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Events

Talent

Massachusetts Apprentice Network 3rd Anniversary Celebration

Small Business

Massachusetts SDO Certification Webinar

Public Policy

2025 Government Affairs Forum | Senate President Karen Spilka

Learning & Development

Creating an Inclusive Workforce: LGBTQIA+ Identities

Transformational DEI Certificate

Women’s Leadership Program

Boston’s Future Leaders

Economic Inclusion

Economic Inclusion

City Awake

Economic Inclusion

Pacesetters

City Awake

Words of Wisdom | Vivien Li

Policy & Impact

GET INVOLVED IN OUR POLICY FOCUS AREAS

Business Climate

Climate & Energy

Health Care

Housing & Development

Talent

Transportation

GBCC’s Networks

OUR NETWORKS

Small Business

City Awake

BIMA

Women’s Network

Massachusetts Apprentice Network

Pacesetters

Membership

About Us

Our Impact

Membership Directory

Not sure if you’re a member?

For our members

Events

Talent

Massachusetts Apprentice Network 3rd Anniversary Celebration

Small Business

Massachusetts SDO Certification Webinar

Public Policy

2025 Government Affairs Forum | Senate President Karen Spilka

Learning & Development

Creating an Inclusive Workforce: LGBTQIA+ Identities

Transformational DEI Certificate

Women’s Leadership Program

Boston’s Future Leaders

Economic Inclusion

Economic Inclusion

City Awake

Economic Inclusion

Pacesetters

City Awake

Words of Wisdom | Vivien Li

Policy & Impact

GET INVOLVED IN OUR POLICY FOCUS AREAS

Business Climate

Climate & Energy

Health Care

Housing & Development

Talent

Transportation

GBCC’s Networks

OUR NETWORKS

Small Business

City Awake

BIMA

Women’s Network

Massachusetts Apprentice Network

Pacesetters

Membership

About Us

Our Impact

Membership Directory