Breaking Barriers Building a Hire Ground – Episode 127 – Supplier Diversity Practices That Drive Real Impact with Curtis Crowder from Fiserv

“As supplier diversity leaders and professionals, we need to open our eyes and minds to doing something differently and finding new ways to engage stakeholders, scale with the program, and create inclusion.”
 – Curtis Crowder

Curtis Crowder is a cross-functional senior executive and award-winning entrepreneur, and diversity leader. He is the Director of Global Supplier Diversity, Sustainability, and Innovation at Fiserv, a leading global technology provider for the financial services industry. Before joining Fiserv, Curtis was the Chief Information Officer of Jetaire Flight Systems and the Director of Client Solutions for Metasys Technologies. He also formerly served as the founder and CEO of Syntellus Dataworks for over a decade before joining SPI as an Infrastructure Solutions Partner in 2014.

Curtis joins me today to discuss creating innovation in supplier diversity and sustainability. He outlines how he transitioned his career from deep technology to supplier diversity. He describes Fiserv’s services and how supplier diversity sits within its global strategic sourcing. He explains supplier sustainability at the enterprise level with Environmental, Social, and Governance metrics and how supplier sustainability can be viewed from the lens of the supply chain and vendors themselves. Curtis also highlights how supplier diversity and supplier sustainability walk hand-in-hand in Fiserv and underscores how supplier diversity professionals and leaders can lead the next steps toward creating an equitable and inclusive marketplace for buyers and suppliers.

This week on Breaking Barriers:

• Curtis’ career history and background in deep technology
• Starting his company and what propelled Curtis’ passion for supplier diversity
• Fiserv and how it serves to move information and money around the world
• The role of passion and what inspires Curtis to continue working in supplier diversity
• The importance of a solid onboarding process for suppliers
• Setting expectations as supplier diversity leaders
• What supplier diversity looks like in Fiserv on a global scale
• How supplier diversity differs according to geography and culture
• Risk management and mitigation and assessing the risk and maturity of a supply chain
• How diverse suppliers can prepare with Fiserv
• Total disruption and what supplier diversity professionals and leaders can do to innovate
• The role of technology in creating modern, equitable, and inclusive marketplaces

Connect with Curtis Crowder:

• Fiserv Services Technology
• Fiserv on LinkedIn
• Fiserv on Facebook
• Fiserv on Twitter
• Curtis Crowder on LinkedIn

This podcast is brought to you by Hire Ground

Hire Ground is a technology company whose mission is to bridge the wealth gap through access to procurement opportunities. Hire Ground is making the enterprise ecosystem more viable, profitable, and competitive by clearing the path for minority-led, women-led, LGBT-led, and veteran-led small businesses to contribute to the global economy as suppliers to enterprise organizations.

For more information on getting started, please visit us @ hireground.io today!

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