Some MichCon employees thought black-owned companies didn't have the technical expertise and financial stability needed to do business with a big utility such as MichCon, Huddleston says. He convinced MichCon to save the program, which he took over as his official job in 1995. The Cooley High School graduate developed a passion about racial inequities while he was studying marketing at the University of Alabama. In college, he visited Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s house and the bus stop that Rosa Parks waited at the day she refused to give her place to a white man. And since taking over the supplier diversity program, Huddleston, who's married and has three children, has gotten a chance to see firsthand how helping a company get a MichCon contract can keep that company financially afloat.
People dream of it all their lives.
Huddleston says he thinks increasing the number of minority-owned businesses that sell goods and services also helps MichCon's bottom line. Drives competition from local companies, whose prices can be better than companies that are farther away and have to factor in the cost of transporting goods. Builds goodwill within MichCon's service area. The average corporation spends about 5 percent of its total spending on minority businesses. Bill Hayes, president of Detroit-based Hayes Excavating, says many large companies often overlook minority businesses and that programs designed to boost minority businesses are being dismantled.