At the end of the day, UPMC and UPMC Health Plan must focus on delivering quality, life-saving medicine while controlling costs. Our certified diverse-owned companies compete for the same work as any other vendor. Their involvement and perspective not only bring new ideas and solutions to UPMC, but they help stimulate competitiveness. And it’s been well established that supplier diversity helps create more socioeconomically stable communities. A decent percentage of our subcontracting opportunities resides with UPMC Health Plan, where government contracts require or have very strong goals surrounding diverse vendors. We’re able to utilize the rubrics and policies within those states in which we’re doing business to identify those diverse-owned companies. We, in collaboration with Health Plan’s Small Diverse Business team, have conversations and do site visits to establish our confidence in their ability to fulfill those portions of a contract for which UPMC Health Plan needs support. Another initiative focuses on UPMC’s construction and real estate business efforts where we want to increase diverse construction and engineering vendors both as direct contractors and subcontractors. We have partnered with Turner Construction Company to connect interested vendors to a series of presentations as well as mentoring opportunities designed to help them grow their company and scale up for larger projects through their Turner School of Construction Management. We have been their leading sponsor for the past four years and have recently opened up our community partners to several large organizations to support the diverse vendor community’s knowledge of construction-related work in the region. We have been highly active in the Presby Bed Tower construction DEI Program efforts, supporting the enterprise goals and objectives to increase diverse vendor education and participation on this phenomenal project. We hope to begin looking for similar opportunities with our global vendors as UPMC supports its international operations in countries where supplier diversity has recently been recognized. The bottom line is that there are tremendous opportunities for diverse vendors with UPMC. I’m proud to play a role in championing and advocating for them. Over the past five years, UPMC has conducted over $1 billion in business with diverse vendors, and that number promises to only increase in the years to come. NOTE: Interested vendors are invited to learn more about UPMC’s Supplier Diversity and Inclusion Program.