TL;DR
- Supplier diversity programs have relied too heavily on spend percentage as a success metric, one that's easy for critics to attack and doesn't capture real impact.
- Lamont Robinson argues the better metrics are outcomes like jobs created, community employment, and tax revenue generated by diverse suppliers.
- Legally defensible programs drop spend quotas, broaden diversity classifications, and focus on developing suppliers rather than just directing spend to them.
- Supplier diversity should sit in procurement — not HR, DEI, or ESG — to stay connected to sourcing decisions and RFPs.
- Despite the pressure on these programs, Lamont sees reason for optimism, pointing to companies like Costco and a new generation of professionals pushing the field forward.
Supplier diversity has taken a beating in recent years. From scaled-back programs to changing titles, many professionals who spent their careers building these initiatives have found themselves sidelined or displaced.
According to Lamont Robinson, a supplier diversity professional with more than two decades of experience, this moment is not the end of the story… not by a long shot.
Rebuilding Supplier Diversity
In a recent episode of The Sourcing Hero podcast, Lamont made the case that the current pressure on supplier diversity programs is actually an opportunity to fix what was not working and build something more durable in its place.
The Spend Metric Problem
One of Lamont's sharpest critiques of supplier diversity is aimed at the way programs have historically measured their success. For too long, he says, the dominant metric has been spend: how much money went to diverse suppliers, and whether that percentage went up or down year over year.
His argument is that leaning on spend as the primary indicator of program health created a vulnerability that critics have been able to exploit. It also missed the point of what supplier diversity is actually for.
If all you can talk about is our program is successful because we spent X number of dollars, that doesn't say anything about the true impact of it. The real impact is jobs.
— Lamont Robinson, Supplier Diversity Expert
How many positions did diverse businesses create? How many people in underserved communities, urban and rural alike, are employed because a company chose to direct spend toward businesses that hire locally? How much tax revenue flowed back into those communities as a result?
Those numbers tell a very different story than just spend percentage, and they are also far harder to undermine. As Lamont puts it, there is not a politician alive who is going to argue publicly that creating jobs in underserved communities is a bad thing.
Legally Defensible by Design
The question of legal defensibility has become unavoidable for people who work in supplier diversity, and Lamont addresses it head on. He says we should not retreat from the work, but instead build programs that can withstand scrutiny from the start.
That means eliminating spend quotas from program language. It means broadening the diversity classifications the program actively supports rather than concentrating exclusively on any single group. It also means centering program design around development, giving small and diverse businesses the tools and support to succeed… rather than simply directing spend their way and hoping for the best.
"Keep the name, but change the game," is how he explains it. The name signals commitment. The game is what has to evolve. A program built around job creation, broad inclusion across diversity classifications, and genuine business development is both more impactful and more defensible than one built around hitting a spend number.
He is also direct about the organizational placement of these programs. Supplier diversity belongs in procurement, not in HR, not under a DEI umbrella, and not tucked away into an ESG function where it risks being seen as a social initiative rather than a business one. When supplier diversity sits inside procurement, it has visibility into the pipeline, access to RFPs, and the ability to integrate diverse suppliers into sourcing decisions strategically. Move it elsewhere, and that strategic connection gets lost.
Supplier Diversity is Far From Doomed
Despite all of the challenges to building and sustaining a successful supplier diversity program, Lamont is genuinely optimistic. He points to companies like Costco, which held its ground publicly and with board-level support, as evidence that the corporate capitulation was never going to be universal.
He sees younger professionals entering the field with a clear-eyed understanding of what supplier diversity is for and why it matters. He also sees the current pressure and scrutiny of supplier diversity as a useful moment that can (if responded to strategically and thoughtfully) force the kind of program evolution that should have happened years ago.
As Lamont put it, "I see this anti-DEI movement as a platform to push supplier diversity to levels that we should have been at in the first place.”
For more of this conversation, listen to the full podcast episdoe here:
