Ameren Corporation is for the first time funding tuition and travel costs for the chief executive officers of three local diverse suppliers to attend the Business Minority Executive Program at the Tuck School on the Dartmouth College Campus in Hanover, N.H. Since 1980, the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth has helped minority business executives succeed and now boasts 4,400 graduates of its high-impact programs.
The executives selected for the program are:
• David Mason, president and chief executive officer, David Mason & Associates, an African-American-owned company that provides civil and structural engineering, architectural, land surveying, and construction management/program management services.
• Anthony (Tony) Gonzalez-Angel, senior managing partner, of the Gonzalez Companies, LLC, which in 2008 was recognized as the Hispanic Company of the Year by the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce of Metropolitan St. Louis (HCC). His firm provides construction, engineering, construction management and architectural services.
• Becky Spurgeon, chief financial officer and vice president of Interface Construction Corporation, an African-American-owned firm that was founded in 1978. The company specializes in construction management and general contracting.
The Tuck School offers two subject areas: the “Building a High Performing Minority Business” Program delivers tools and management perspectives to help diverse companies understand what they are doing right and how they can improve. The “Growing the Minority Business to Scale” Program focuses on growth as a way for high potential companies to achieve their strategic objectives.
David Mason and Becky Spurgeon will attend “Growing Minority Business to Scale” advanced sessions. Anthony Gonzalez-Angel will attend the “Building a High-Performing Minority Business” session.
Ameren’s Supplier Diversity professionals joined a cross section of business leaders from within Ameren to select suppliers headquartered within Ameren’s 64,000-square-mile service territory in Illinois and Missouri. Major criteria for selection were the amount of business they did with Ameren and the supplier’s success in providing service to a range of companies in the region.
“We are happy to be involved for the first time with funding the costs for these top-flight executives,” says Thomas R. Voss, AmerenUE president and chief executive officer. “As a major purchaser of materials and services, Ameren plays a significant role in the growth and development of diverse suppliers. Over many years, our company has worked hard to ensure that qualified diverse suppliers are encouraged and given the opportunity to do business with us and other local suppliers. This is one more step in our continuing initiative to open doors for minority-owned suppliers.”
Through its award-winning supplier diversity program, Ameren has encouraged and assisted diverse suppliers by providing mentoring, sponsoring symposiums and network meetings and reaching out to help these suppliers not only within the company but with its major contractors.
“With the Tuck School initiative, we are facilitating yet another opportunity for diverse businesses to expand their expertise by giving them an opportunity to tap the expertise of top minds in business education and to build relationships with major organizations to expand their network of diverse suppliers,” says Adriene Bruce, managing executive, Supplier Diversity, Strategic Sourcing, Ameren Corporation.
With assets of approximately $23 billion, Ameren serves 2.4 million electric customers and one million natural gas customers in a 64,000-square-mile area of Missouri and Illinois.
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CONTACT: Susan Gallagher, 314.554.2175, of AmerenUE