Abbott Joins Billion Dollar Roundtable

September 07, 2023 at 13:15 PM EDT

NORTHAMPTON, MA / ACCESSWIRE / September 7, 2023 / As a global company with a broad range of businesses, operations in over 160 countries and 115,000 people around the world, diversity is inherent to our business and organization.

The Billion Dollar Roundtable (BDR) is an organization dedicated to inspiring America's leading companies to expand and grow their work with diverse businesses across the country. They set a high bar - to join the BDR, companies need to spend $1 billion or more with diverse suppliers, every year. It's an important benchmark for demonstrating the positive impact that businesses can have in improving lives and advancing opportunity in diverse communities.

At the annual BDR Summit recently held in Chicago, Abbott was proud to be inducted into the exclusive group of Billion Dollar Roundtable members. We've made significant progress in expanding our work with diverse suppliers in recent years. We currently work with more than 1,300 diverse suppliers, including certified minority-, women-, disabled-, LGBTQ-, and veteran-owned businesses, spending $1.7 billion in 2022, an increase of 63% from the prior year.

Supplier diversity is an integral part of our broader work to build a resilient and sustainable supply chain, and our commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion. A wider pool of potential suppliers helps strengthen supply chain resilience and ensure business continuity, and also promotes competition in the supply chain, which can enhance products and services and decrease costs.

This work is having a significant economic impact as well. A recent analysis showed that our supplier diversity efforts have supported over 7,500 jobs and generated over $4.5 billion in economic impact in the communities where we operate across the U.S.

Delivering Even Greater Impact in the Years Ahead

Our inclusion in the Billion Dollar Roundtable is an important milestone. But we know it's not just about purchasing more products and services from diverse companies.

Diverse owners of small companies face real barriers in growing their businesses. Half of diverse businesses can't get a loan. And in healthcare, strict regulations and systemic budget challenges make it hard to compete with bigger, more established rivals.

That's why we're working with others to help address these gaps. One example: the Abbott-LISC Initiative to Support Diverse Businesses in Health is investing more than $37 million to provide diverse small businesses with the resources and support they need to compete, grow and create jobs in the healthcare industry. For more on these efforts, please see our story on the LISC collaboration.

View additional multimedia and more ESG storytelling from Abbott on 3blmedia.com.