DiversityInc - July/August 2009

Leadership Profiles

SUPPLIER STRATEGIES FROM DELOITTE’S MICHAEL MCMAHON

Michael McMahon started his career working with numbers but soon understood how critical the right numbers and corresponding strategies are to a company’s vision and values.

A CPA by training, McMahon is the chief procurement officer at Deloitte. He has two main diversity objectives—provide opportunities for minority-owned suppliers and establish Deloitte as a diversity and corporate-responsibility leader.

“The traditional supplier-diversity metric is to cultivate spend with MBEs (minority-owned business enterprises) … The second part of that is to have supplier-development initiatives, real external outreach programs. We are trying to get more integrated into diverse communities,” he says.

His key goal, to put it simply, is to align the supply-chain focus with the community focus. This is done specifically with projects such as workshops with entrepreneurs. For example, McMahon cites Deloitte’s efforts with Sweet Unity Farms, an African

coffee-grower cooperative owned by Jackie Robinson’s son, David. Deloitte has worked with Sweet Unity

Farms and its U.S. distribution arm to establish U.S. relationships and market presence.

“We are directly benefiting the 300 growers in Africa … and you can’t get any better than that for supplier diversity,” he says.

JANET CRENSHAW
SMITH
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
MICHAEL MCMAHON
Deloitte
DiversityInc Top 50
Rank: 33

McMahon had extensive procurement experience before joining Deloitte in 2001. He previously was with Kellogg Co., one of DiversityInc’s 25 Noteworthy Companies, and a financial-services company. At both of those companies, McMahon was key in starting the supplier-diversity program. “The money we are making should be reinvested in our supply chain to reflect the communities in which we are doing business,” he notes.

AETNA’S ANDREW LEE: MAKING A REAL DIFFERENCE

ANDREW LEE
Aetna
DiversityInc Top 50
Rank: 48

Andrew Lee has spent his career “doing meaningful work,” first with the Ford Foundation’s Peace and Social Justice Program, then as executive director of the Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development, and then as the head of Aetna’s Office of Public Policy.

Yet in his current job, as chief of staff to Aetna

President Mark Bertolini, Lee has more influence than ever.

As Congress and President Barack Obama consider major healthcare reform, health-insurance companies are at the forefront. Aetna, which has more than 37 million customers, is a long-time leader in eliminating healthcare disparities.

“Good policy and good business are not mutually

exclusive,” Lee says. “As Mark’s chief of staff, I’ve been able to stress this. I’ve also been fortunate to be a positive part of public-policy solutions that will help make our system work even more.”

Lee is deeply involved in Aetna’s American Indian employee-resource group. His extended family lives on the Seneca Nation of Indians’ Cattaraugus Indian Reservation in New York state and his commitment to his heritage is strong. He is the vice chairman of the board of the Smithsonian’s Heye Center of the National Museum of the American Indian and is a member of the board of governors for the Harvard Project’s Honoring Nations tribal governance awards program. He also serves on boards and advisory councils for the Trust for Public Land and the National Congress of American Indians.

“Working at Aetna has allowed me to remain on the boards I was already on—and being able to be part of our Native American ERG was critical as well,” Lee says.