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Stellantis, National Business League kick off Black supplier initiative


DETROIT — NBA legend Isiah Thomas believes hemp can be a key piece in helping auto manufacturers and other industries reduce their carbon footprints.

Thomas, the former Detroit Pistons star, is the CEO and largest shareholder in One World Pharma. The company has built a hemp-growing operation in Colombia that’s ready to supply various sectors when they’re ready to make the transition to materials based on the plant.

The company works with indigenous farmers in the region. Thomas said automakers such as BMW have already used hemp-based components in their vehicles.

“The reason why we chose to grow in Colombia is because we can turn our soil over three times a year,” Thomas told Automotive News. “When we talk about the industries, the demand that most industries will have, you have to have the supply to meet the demand. Again, from a growing standpoint and a seasonal standpoint, that was the best place that we found to grow and to cultivate.”

Thomas’ company is among 13 chosen for the pilot run of the Stellantis-National Business League National Black Supplier Development Program. The initiative will provide businesses with virtual training and give them access to an online marketplace with the goal of building “a bridge between the public and private sectors to create substantive business opportunities for Black suppliers” around the U.S. and internationally.

The National Business League was founded in 1900 by Booker T. Washington.

Stellantis and the National Business League had targeted a January start date for the program but ended up pulling it ahead to November. The pilot will run through the first quarter of 2022.

The first companies to participate are ACE Petroleum; Assured Quality Systems; Coltrane Logistics & Trucking; Devon Industrial Group; Dunamis Clean Energy Partners; GS3 Global; ISIAH International/One World Pharma; Multi-Training Systems; Russell Westbrook Enterprises; Ryan Industries Inc.; Simontic Composite Inc.; TEN35; and TKT & Associates Inc.

Stellantis will anchor the creation of a virtual training and development portal over the next three years. It will open the portal to its own suppliers first and then make it available to other automakers, the federal government and companies in the public and private sectors.

“After 400 years of anti-Black sentiment and racial oppression and more than 50 years after the Civil Rights Movement, Black businesses are at the bottom of the racial and economic hierarchy,” said Ken Harris, CEO of the National Business League, during Wednesday’s kickoff event. “Stellantis and the National Business League believe that one of the solutions to the problem at hand is economic.”

In a joint statement, Stellantis and the business league said about 95 percent of Black-owned businesses today are mainly “solopreneurs,” meaning they are home-based, one-employee enterprises or are considered microbusinesses. Of these, they said “fewer than 3 percent are minority or agency certified, and most do not have the capacity, scope and scale to meet the demands of future contracting and procurement opportunities with Fortune 500 companies and the federal government.”

The goal, Harris said, is to help develop these operations and “change the systematic economic issues plaguing the Black community nationwide.”

Harris said hundreds of companies applied for the pilot program.

The National Business League wanted to work with Stellantis because of its experience in supplier diversity. Chrysler founded its minority supplier program in 1983 and has spent more than $60 billion with diverse suppliers since then.

The new program was born after the automaker’s diversity and inclusion office, led by Lottie Holland, met with the business league and brainstormed ideas.

Holland said Mike Manley, who is leaving Stellantis for retail group AutoNation, and Stellantis North America COO Mark Stewart quickly embraced the idea of this development initiative.

“It’s an idea that addresses the need to take direct, decisive and intentional actions to bring economic opportunities to our community here, to those that have been denied equal access to the marketplace for far, far too long,” Stewart said.



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