Ep 93: Empowering Supplier Diversity Managers to Drive Change feat. Stephanie Lokker

Supplier diversity is a good idea - but that fact plus a vision creates very little value. It takes leadership, ownership, and a lot of hard work to convert the vision and social mission behind supplier diversity into tangible results.

In this episode of The Sourcing Hero podcast, Host Kelly Barner welcomes Stephanie Lokker. Stephanie is the CEO and Managing Partner of Lockerbie & Co., where she and her team of consultants solve complex business problems for their Fortune 500 and private equity clients. Also relevant to today’s conversation is that Lockerbie currently holds nine diverse-supplier certifications at both the state and federal level.

In this conversation, Stephanie shares her experience with making supplier diversity programs as successful as the vision that drives them:

• To what extent should supplier diversity be clearly owned by one or more full time professionals and to what extent should responsibility be distributed to everyone with decision making authority?
• What is the difference between supplier diversity programs and DEI programs?
• What skillsets are needed for supplier diversity managers to be successful in their role?