Amazon’s leadership in supplier diversity has positioned the corporation for success while driving inclusive economic growth. Kennedy Oates, Partnership Board Member and Vice President of Global Procurement at Amazon, shared insights and best practices at the Greater Houston Partnership’s One Houston Together Fall Chief Procurement Officers (CPO) Convening.  Oates discussed how Amazon has grown its supplier diversity efforts by ensuring the value proposition of advancing supplier diversity and inclusion throughout our supply chain is communicated at every level. According to Amazon’s 2023 Sustainability Report, the company’s global supplier diversity and inclusion (SD&I) program is estimated to have supported over 30,000 U.S. jobs and generated approximately $2.8 billion in wages, earned from Amazon’s certified U.S. tier 1 supplier diversity spend. In 2023, Amazon was inducted to the Billion Dollar Roundtable, a nonprofit organization comprised of U.S. corporations that each spend $1 billion or more annually on a tier 1 basis with diverse suppliers. These diverse-owned businesses include majority owners identifying as minorities, women, veterans, disabled, and LGBTQ.  Oates stated that achieving this milestone required a deliberate approach, built on a clear vision, a targeted strategy, and an empowered team dedicated to executing these goals. By embedding supplier diversity into Amazon’s core procurement practices, they’ve fostered a sustainable and inclusive growth model that supports the company’s goals and the success of diverse suppliers. Key Takeaways from CPO Convening Supplier Diversity as a Strategic Value Proposition Oates emphasized the importance of viewing supplier diversity as more than just an initiative—highlighting the long-term value diverse suppliers bring to a company and its surrounding communities. Through its global SD&I strategy, Amazon measures impact through jobs supported, wages earned, and economic output generated. “Given our reach and scale, Amazon has a greater responsibility.” – Kennedy Oates, VP of Global Procurement, Amazon Vision-Driven Goals with Clear Strategies For Amazon, supplier diversity goes beyond statements. Oates stressed the importance of crafting a well-defined vision, supported by actionable strategies to advance supplier diversity objectives. He also noted that internal teams should have collaborative discussions on supplier diversity across the entire business rather than in silos.   Partnering with Companies at Every Level “Every large company was once small.” – Kennedy Oates, VP of Global Procurement, Amazon Amazon is redefining procurement by challenging the perception that only large companies can serve large corporations. Its approach embraces partnerships with businesses of all sizes, embedding supplier diversity as a core element of its supply chain. This creates a positive ripple effect that brings opportunities to underrepresented companies. To learn more about the Partnership’s Supplier Diversity workstream, contact LaTanya Flix.

Plug and Play, an acclaimed startup incubator and accelerator based in Silicon Valley, Calif., has announced plans for a new location in Sugar Land, focusing on solutions for the future of smart cities.   Plug and Play accelerated more than 2,700 startups globally in 2023, through work to connect entrepreneurs and startups with valuable resources to help their ideas succeed. The organization is three-pronged, with accelerator programs to help startups, a corporate innovation division for established companies, and venture capital to fund promising enterprises.   Representatives from the Sugar Land Office of Economic Development attended the announcement for the new location at Plug and Play’s November 2024 Silicon Valley Summit.   “We are excited to welcome Plug and Play to Sugar Land,” Mayor of Sugar Land Joe Zimmerman said. “This investment will help us connect with corporate contacts and experts in startups and businesses that would take us many years to reach on our own. It allows us to create a presence, attract investments and jobs to the city, and hopefully become a base of operations for some of these high-growth companies.”  The new location, to be located in Sugar Land Town Square, will officially launch in February or March 2025, with around 15 startups and 4 full-time employee equivalents. The approaches toward smart cities will include startups that focus on energy, health, transportation and mobility.  The Partnership’s trade missions to California in 2022 and 2023 included visits to Plug and Play’s headquarters, fostering discussion on potential for growth in Greater Houston. These visits and continued conversations helped build momentum that led to last week’s announcement for the investment in Sugar Land. “The Partnership is excited for the announcement of Plug and Play’s investment in the Houston region,” Greater Houston Partnership SVP of Economic Development Craig Rhodes said. “Houston’s innovation ecosystem seeks solutions in key industries of energy efficiency, life sciences, aerospace and transportation, and we are pleased to welcome Plug and Play to the Greater Houston area to accelerate these emerging technologies”  The new location underscores the region’s growing innovation ecosystem, seeing substantive growth not only in Houston proper with impactful incubators such as the Ion or Greentown Labs, but also around the region, with industry-specific accelerators like Halliburton Labs on the North Beltway and the Alexandria Center for Advanced Technology in The Woodlands.  For more on Houston’s innovation ecosystem, visit our Innovation and Startups page.