Ameren Corporation is for the second consecutive year funding tuition and travel costs for one executive each of two 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 diverse owned business executives succeed and now boasts 4,400 graduates of its high-impact programs.
The companies or suppliers selected for the program are:
• TSI Engineering Inc. of St. Louis, Mo., an African-American-owned company. TSI’s 30-person engineering practice offers comprehensive, integrated geotechnical engineering, construction observation and testing services.
• Mettam Safety Supply, a woman-owned company in Danville, Ill. Mettam Safety’s primary business has been in the distribution of industrial safety and occupational health. Today, as one of the nation’s premier privately owned safety distributors, Mettam Safety represents over 500 leading safety manufacturers.
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.
Morris Hervey, President of TSI Engineering, will attend the “Building a High-Performing Minority Business” session. Nan Mettam, Chief Executive Officer of Mettam Safety Supply, will attend the “Growing Minority Business to Scale” session.
Ameren’s cross section of business leaders from within the company selected the suppliers headquartered within Ameren’s 64,500-square-mile service territory in Illinois and Missouri. The Supplier Diversity Team narrowed the original 96 top diverse suppliers within the supply chain down to four for the leaders to make the selection of Mettam Safety Supply and TSI Engineering. Major criteria for selection were the amount of business they did with Ameren, their strategic relationship with the company and the supplier’s success in providing service to a range of companies in the region.
“We are happy to be involved with funding the costs for these top-flight executives,” says Thomas R. Voss, Ameren 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 diverse-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 and suppliers.
“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 $24 billion, Ameren serves 2.4 million electric customers and one million natural gas customers in a 64,500-square-mile area of Missouri and Illinois.
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Brianne Lindemann, 314-554-2738