VISION OF THE FUTURE

On November 5th Accenture hosted a meeting of key people in the development of supplier diversity in the UK. We brought together MNC’s represented by Marianne Schoenig of Accenture, Emma Rees and Gwen Turner of Pfizer, and Lisa Russell of Goldmann Sachs. WBENC WBE’s Terri McNally, Pamela O’Rourke and Vicki Prot brought insight into the opportunities certification brings.

Angela Maxwell, Commercial Director of Fracino www.fracino.com (link is external), Sara Hill Founder of Capability Jane www.capabilityjane.co.uk (link is external) championed the UK business owner perspective. Representing the business sector throughout the UK was Trish Lawrence on behalf of Business In the Community.

Research was represented by Professor Mark Hart of the Small Business Research Centre of Kingston University. Professor Hart is an eminent researcher in the field of enterprise development.

The government agenda was ably represented by Lorely Burt MP.

This energised and interesting session gave us an opportunity to explore the opportunities WEConnect has throughout the UK, and as part of the global initiative, from all stakeholder perspectives. It highlighted the importance of global corporations sharing and supporting the message to their UK based teams, also the importance of the government leading the way by requiring reporting on supplier diversity in company annual reports. However, without base line data it is difficult for us to measure the impact of this initiative over the coming years.

We have much to do, but it is a challenge we embrace!