META EMEA: CONNECTING COMMUNITIES THROUGH SUPPLIER DIVERSITY

Krystle Sands, head of supplier diversity for the EMEA region on Meta’s global mission to foster opportunities for diverse-owned companies

Meta’s mission is to give people the power to build community and to bring the world closer together.

According to Krystle Sands, Meta’s Head of Supplier Diversity for the EMEA region, this holds true for her team’s work as well. “When it comes to supplier diversity, Meta’s goal is to create opportunities for diverse-owned companies to do business with Meta, and the people and communities that Meta connects.”

This principle of ’connection’, acts as a sort of subtle double-entendre in Meta’s vision, since it simultaneously means bringing people together; and also empowering them to network through its technologies.

Supplier diversity at Meta is one of ambitious proportions, but it has already exceeded expectations both in terms of its reach and its impact.

In 2020, the company announced their public commitment to invest a minimum of US$1bn with diverse-owned suppliers and US$300mn with black-owned businesses.

“We surpassed that goal in 2021, with an amazing recorded spend of US$1.4bn globally with diverse-owned companies, and US$306mn with specifically blackowned businesses in the United States. And we’ve been focusing on continued progress, says Sands.”

2004

Year founded (then Facebook) 2021 Facebook became Meta Platforms, Inc

$116bn Revenue (USD)

10K+

Number of Employees

CEO Mark Zuckerberg

Such a level of growth and expansion is nothing short of incredible, and it speaks to both to how foundational DEI is at the company, as well as the unmistakable explosion in demand for such projects.

And as the demand accelerates, adept companies will move with the zeitgeist accordingly. But only the most visionary will have the wherewithal to actively stimulate that demand.

In keeping with this axiom, Sands says that Meta’s Global Supplier Diversity work has evolved quite dramatically over the last few years. Originally launched in 2016, it has expanded across countries and regions ever since.

“In 2020, we launched our efforts in APAC, EMEA and LATAM, and the real focus was on making as big an impact for diverseowned businesses as possible,” she says.

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 budgets,

$1bn

In 2020, Meta announced their public commitment to invest a minimum of US$1bn with diverse-owned companies and US$300mn with black-owned businesses

$1.4bn

In 2021, Meta recorded a US$1.4bn spend with diverse-owned companies and a US$306mn with U.S. black-owned businesses, exceeding its annual goal and I think that’s a big part of the reason why we’ve been one of the fastest growing supplier diversity programs in the whole world.”

Last year, Meta was inducted into the Billion Dollar Round Table (BDR). “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.

As an organisation with such weight, Meta is perfectly oriented to have a serious impact in supplier diversity on a global scale, and we can already see its influence.

Supplier diversity is the branch of DEI that particularly focuses on the economic aspect of the grand project; recognising that economic empowerment is closely tied to, and indivisible from 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 in terms of how they spend their money; and consequently how they affect broader

Meta EMEA: Connecting communities through supplier diversity

society in the creation of generational wealth and socioeconomic change.”

There are still many people that labour under the false impression that only the largest players, and the largest suppliers in the world are really capable of bringing about any kind of meaningful change; and so ’why then should the small players even play?’

Krystle Sands is not one of those people. She illuminates the situation for the fatalist and disaffected by saying: “Diverse suppliers have an enormous impact on their communities. They employ people; they pay rent; they bring massive 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.”

From this angle, supplier diversity is grass-roots, and it is in this recognition that Meta shines.

Meta’s S2P and supplier diversity journey

Meta’s source-to-pay organisation has been on an impressive transformational journey over the past few years. When Sands came aboard back in 2019, she joined a small global team who were set to expand. Since then, the team has expanded out on an international scale. They’ve grown in their tooling, their processes and their capability, all within a very short timeframe.

“We’re able to do this by building connections, by driving stakeholder engagement and by building an intuitive buying experience – all while streamlining our processes,” says Sands. “We’ve aligned our performance measures to north stars that embody source-to-pay’s commitment to our stakeholders. Supplier diversity sits within one of those North Stars and shines as part of our community pillar.”

Meta’s supplier diversity initiative was originally launched in 2016, and has expanded globally ever since.