Krystle Sands

According to Krystle Sands, Meta’s Head of Supplier Diversity for the EMEA region, Meta's mission is to give people the power to build community and to bring the world closer together.

“When it comes to supplier diversity, Meta’s mission is to create opportunities for diverse-owned companies to do business with Meta, and the people and communities that Meta connects.”

The supplier diversity initiative at Meta is one of ambitious proportions, but it has already exceeded expectations.

Supporting diverse-owned companies

In 2020, the company announced their public commitment to invest a minimum of US$1bn with diverse-owned companies and US$300mn with black-owned businesses. “We surpassed that goal in 2021, with an amazing recorded spend of US$1.4bn with diverse-owned companies and US$306mn with black-owned businesses in the United States. We’ve been focusing on continued progress”, says Sands.

Supplier Diversity at Meta has evolved quite dramatically over the last few years. The work was originally launched in 2016, and has expanded internationally ever since. Sands says: “In 2020, we launched our programme in EMEA, LATAM and APAC, and the real focus was on making as big an impact for diverse-owned businesses as possible.”

Sands knows that one of the main reasons that Meta has been so impactful is because of the way that the company communicates concerning supplier diversity within the business.

“Everyone at Meta is a buyer,” she says. “We want Meta employees to be intentional in the way that they spend their budget, and I think that's part of the reason why we've been one of the fastest growing supplier diversity programs.”

Last year, Meta was inducted into the Billion Dollar Round Table (BDRT), “It was an incredible achievement for the team globally, but we've still got more to do, and much more of an impact to make,” she says.

Supplier diversity at Meta

Meta is, as an organisation with such weight, perfectly placed to have a huge impact in supplier diversity on a global scale, and we can already see its influence. Supplier diversity is the branch of DE&I, that particularly focuses on the economic aspect of the grand project; recognising that economic empowerment is closely tied to social empowerment. In the end, it all goes back to first principles.

“Opportunities shouldn't be based on historical systemic biases and supplier diversity really challenges that,” says Sands. “For me, that's why it's so important to hold companies to account for how they spend their money, and how they affect broader society in creating generational wealth, and socioeconomic change.

“Diverse suppliers have an enormous impact in their communities. They employ people; they pay rent; they bring value to our economies - economies which are primarily made up of small and diverse-owned businesses that exist to really drive us forward through their innovation, entrepreneurship - and the diverse perspectives that they bring.”

This is where Meta shines.

Read the full story HERE.