Higher Education Banking

Kerry:

We at J.P. Morgan believe higher education plays a critical role in our society. It empowers our communities through discourse and critical thinking, it enables our citizens to gain workplace skills, and develops our society's worldviews. All of the institutions and individuals who contribute to this deserve our heartfelt thanks, especially as they've pushed on through these trying times. The commercial bank is honored to support your work, with over 200 employees dedicated to this industry. It is our responsibility to deliver you the firm's full capabilities, from debt structuring to cash management solutions, from operational efficiency improvements to strategic opportunities. Today, I'm excited to share highlights from a webinar about a subject that is top of mind to many: supplier diversity and key strategies for developing a successful program. So without further ado, here's Kyle Williams.

Kyle:

We're fortunate to have a great panel to help us navigate supplier diversity in higher education. Each of our panelists will help us explore the complexities involved in creating an inclusive supplier diversity program. Paul, I'll kick this over to you. Let's talk about the business case and also some of the data that you may be using to sort of support what's going on at the UC system.

Paul:

So the data would show that typically small and diverse businesses are more agile, typically more competitive pricing. Even introducing them as a disruptive supplier to your existing supply base will cause your other suppliers to be more aggressive. And so there's a very solid bottom line business case before you even get to the social impact piece of it.

Kyle:

That's great. I'm interested in some of the basic blocking and tackling as well. Basically taking your supplier diversity program sort of from A to B. And how did you sort of get some of your strategic priorities aligned with the diversity equity and inclusion piece and ultimately, how did you get it on the agenda?

Allen:

Where we, I think, did a phenomenal job at Drexel was that we looked at it from an aspect of ensuring that supplier diversity is just not growing spec; it has to be within our policies, our practices. And so, really kind of looking at things from that angle is really how we kind of came about a robust program in a short period of time.

Jerry:

One of the things that we have done at Clemson–different approach–is that we have partnered with our procurement and business services, as well as with our capital projects area which is in university facilities. And so our university has modeled more of a, kind of a three-legged stool if you will, where we’re addressing it from a construction standpoint, from a procurement standpoint, but also driving the initiative from the D&I space.

Paul:

I actually think there's not a great deal of difference between the way that we should approach it in higher ed and the way that we should approach it in the private sector. The basic fundamentals of having leadership support, getting stakeholder alignment, making sure that you have the right metrics in place, making sure that we are communicating out to the community. I think there's a constant amount of communication that has to happen with the key stakeholder groups inside the organization to do some of what I call like myth busting. You know, there are a lot of myths that are very persistent about doing business with MBE. So doing some work to make sure that you're doing that myth busting.

Jerry:

To Paul's point, there's a lot of myths out there about MBEs and them not being able to perform. And so we know that the data shows us that that's not the case. I spend a lot of time facilitating meetings with MBEs on our campus, providing them opportunities to pitch their capabilities. So a lot of the work takes place at the department level.

Kyle:

You've all talked about consensus, right, and finding commonality and common ground. And I'm curious, Alan, for you and Drexel, what is, how are you doing that?

Allen:

In order to really build consensus and... it has to start with having organic relationships. It has to start with inviting stakeholders to the table not just when there's need for an opportunity, but beforehand. So what our team began to do is that we actually began to really meet with different departments, not on a monthly, but once every two months. From a student perspective, I'd say it's really the engagement with student life, understanding that even your fraternities and sororities have purchasing influence.

Kyle:

There's no greater business imperative than making sure that your students, right, who are paying tuition are happy and, and taken care of. And with that, Paul I’ll turn our attention to you. What role do our students have to play here? How are they holding you guys accountable?

Paul:

One of the things that I love about this generation of young people in general is that they are holding society to a much tighter account to live up to the ideals that are presented. Certainly at the UC schools, the student body has had a reputation for decades for student activism and for holding leadership accountable. We just brought in our most diverse student body ever. And you think of it in terms of long-term business case. That in and of itself should drive us towards support for small and diverse businesses.

Kyle:

That's great, Jerry, anything else you wanna add?

Jerry:

Yeah, I echo everything that my colleagues have indicated. I think data is important, that that should drive decision making. And so you have to have good data, good metrics. I think taking advantage of your internal resources because if you have a small operation, you need to partner, you can't do it alone. And so take advantage. Higher education is unique in that you've got content experts on your campus that can help you develop your programs and so take advantage of that.

Kyle:

Alan and Paul, Jerry, thank you so much. On behalf of Carrie and our entire team as well as our panelists, thank you for joining.

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