AS PREPARED FOR DELIVERY
Minority Enterprise Development Week Conference
Washington, DC
Thursday, December 6, 2012
It now gives me great pleasure to introduce you to a cadre of industry professionals who are spearheading an exciting new partnership with MBDA that will allow us to make headway into one of the fastest growing industries—the medical sector.
To no one surprise, the health care industry is one of the world’s largest and fastest-growing industries. Consuming over 10 percent of gross domestic product of most developed nations, health care can form an enormous part of a country’s economy.
It is also a sector that dominated by minority-owned firms who excel at, providing goods and services to treat patients, assemble medical equipment and supplies, operate hospitals, clinics and laboratories, and manufacture medicines and new biotechnologies
The Healthcare Supplier Diversity Alliance (HSDA) was formed about nine years ago when it became evident that to affect substantial change in the levels of supplier diversity, industry colleagues needed to collaborate, promote best practices and to partner with like-minded allies. That eventually led them to Beverly Kuykendall, an expert at helping large business customers comply with federal outsourcing mandates involving small businesses and diversity and a friend of MBDA.
Beverly is a firm believer that small and minority-owned firms offer value to large businesses. She knows corporate America benefits from increases in market share and a solid return on investment through small and diverse business networks. She also has a keen knack for seeing programmatic synergies which is why she put Healthcare Supplier Diversity Alliance and MBDA in the room together.
As a result, it’s my pleasure to be here today and to sign this historic agreement between MBDA and HSDA. Let’s give Beverly a round of applause. This MOU establishes guidelines for a working relationship that aims to open doors to the healthcare industry for minority-owned firms. Every aspect of this agreement is exciting and to give you an overview of some of its major provisions, let me introduce HSDA Board of Director and Treasurer, Mr. Kevin Price.
