The Women’s Business Council – Southwest works hard to provide valuable programming to connect our women-owned businesses with opportunities to grow their businesses. This is something we can’t do without the support of our sponsors. Over the next few months, we will highlight our Champion Circle Platinum Sponsors, and bring you some information about their supplier diversity programs.
We have asked Heather Herndon Wright, Director of Supply Chain Diversity and Sustainability at Vistra, some questions about Vistra’s supplier diversity program and insights to working with Vistra.
We are committed to growing with WBEs.
Vistra has a strong commitment to identifying, utilizing and growing our certified WBEs. As a WBENC Platinum Top Corp, we work closely with seven WBENC Regional Partner Organizations to support our local WBEs. We are proud to say that the majority of our diversity spend is with WBEs of all colors!
Vistra's Growth & Capacity program has been very successful!
Despite multiple acquisitions of companies without Supply Chain Diversity Initiatives, our WBE partnerships keep growing. We believe this to be a direct result of our Growth & Capacity Building program, our Annual Strategic Planning process for spend outside of Supply Chain Management. Vistra’s Pre-Qualification program engages with WBCS and our other RPO’s, participating in 1:1 Matchmakers and other networking opportunities – even in this virtual world of Zoom meetings!
“We have been able to increase our WBE spend by 55.06% over last year, and continue to increase in both dollar spend & percentage.” – Heather Herndon Wright, Director, Supply Chain Diversity & Sustainability at Vistra
WBENC/WBCS certifications are ideal.
We require third party certification to be included in our WBE spend reporting. We accept other certifications that follow 40 CFR Part 26 standards, but we REQUEST WBENC/WBCS certification because that is the database that our sourcing professionals are required to utilize for each competitive bid based on our “Rule of At Least One”. All WBEs need to ensure is that their business description in WBENCLink, when they certify or recertify, lists all their products/services, relevant industry certifications, etc., by KEYWORD, since that is the way our supply chain professionals’ source.
Please send a Capabilities Statement along with a list of current/recent contracts/project descriptions, highlighting relevant work that can translate to a power generation or retail electric company needs, to [email protected]. Mary manages our Prequalification, Growth & Capacity Building and Multi-Tier programs and will be able to advocate on the WBEs behalf.
