- Support for this program was provided by Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey.

- Hello, this is John Harmon.

I'm the founder, president, and CEO of the African American Chamber of Commerce of New Jersey.

And welcome to Pathway to Success.

I'm delighted to welcome today our guest, Ms. Toma Gadson Shaw.

She is director of Supply Chain Sustainability and supplier Diversity for ConEd of New York and New Jersey.

You know, they say people make the world go round, but without energy, nothing gets done.

And ConEd is one of the oldest utilities in these United States.

So Toma, welcome to Pathway to Success.

- Thank you for having me, John.

- Looking forward to our conversation today.

So let's start off a little bit about you, where you're from.

- I was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York.

I have four siblings.

I have three sisters, one brother.

I am one of 33 grandchildren on my mother's side, one of eight grandchildren on my father's side.

So I'm from a big family.

I'm the fantastic, wonderful favorite godmother of five beautiful human beings.

- What was it like growing up in Brooklyn?

- Growing up in Brooklyn around a large family that's just filled with love and care and concern was just everything for me.

It rooted me in everything that I am today.

My grandparents were born and raised in Brooklyn as well, so we had a sense of community.

Everywhere I went, I felt like everyone was family, aunties, uncles, everywhere that I, I went.

So I felt safe growing up in Brooklyn.

- Any particular community in Brooklyn?

Brooklyn is a big place.

- I was in Brownsville.

Okay.

Brownsville never ran, never Will.

That's where I was born and I was raised the majority of my family.

I love it.

I love it.

In Bedford-Stuyvesant.

- So Brownsville, Mike Tyson, was he from that community?

He was.

He was from Brownsville, - Yes.

- So, so that tagline is legit.

- Yes, it's very legit.

- I love it.

All right.

The two universities you went to and why?

- I am a graduate of HBCU Johnson c Smith University in Charlotte, North Carolina.

And I also went to graduate school at Michigan State University going to Michigan State University.

I hadn't been to visit the school, the school actually came to recruit me.

I never went to visit.

And the reason why I decided to go there is they gave me a hundred percent scholarship opportunity that I was not going to pass up.

Johnson c Smith University is a historically black college and university in Charlotte, North Carolina.

I chose to go to a historically black college and university because I wanted to experience that sense of belonging, which I did.

There you are, you feel safe, you feel secure.

Your professors and your educators are very concerned about not only you as a a, a black individual, but understanding what society holds, what the future holds for you, and how you should show up and how you can make a grand impact in society.

So I received all of that and more during my educational opportunity there.

I think students, when they leave from A-H-B-C-U, you feel like you can be in any environment, and that's how they prepared me.

They let me know that, you know, there is no competition.

I'm uniquely and wonderfully made in my own skin.

I am who I am.

I am powerful, I'm unstoppable, and I'm, I I'm adaptable to any situation.

And that's what I walked out into society believing and knowing about myself.

- You know, I think those are some, some powerful transformational attributes.

I felt every, every syllable you just articulated, which was great.

So inspirational - Stories, which I always looked at.

My grandmother, who was an educator for 32 years, she raised eight children.

My grandmother showed me what a strong black woman could do and what she could be.

So that was very inspirational to watch my grandmother be a educator, go to school.

She went to receive her master's degree when, when she already had eight children.

So that was very inspirational to me.

So education was not, you know, an option for me, it was that's what you're going to do.

My grandfather, I talk about him often because he is one of the reasons for my why.

My grandfather, he fought in World War II and he was not provided the essential benefits of the GI Bill, like some of his counterparts.

So that over time and and throughout our lives impacted my family and continues to impact us today.

He didn't amass the same level of education and wealth as his counterparts because of things like the Jim Crow laws and the GI Bill.

So my grandfather is the reason why I am so passionate about the space that I work in today.

So I take all of the inequities that he's experienced and what my family continues to experience today, and I ground that and root that in the reason why I'm so passionate about forging pathways for businesses.

- You know, I like those examples you just shared.

You know, when I founded the African American Chamber of Commerce in 2007, I too did a look back and I, I kind of studied Booker t Washington when he established the Negro Business League in 1900 and really positioned black people at a very tumultuous time in this country to persevere, leverage your strengths and get in the marketplace and and embrace free enterprise and capitalism.

So now you have two degrees from two major institutions and your first professional job, - My first real job outside of after I graduated from Michigan State is I went to work for the government doing national security clearances.

- So how did you arrive at Con Ed from working with the government now going from the public sector now to the private sector?

- It's very interesting.

I don't think anything happens by coincidence.

I was walking up 18th Street, east 18th Street and there was a long line and I just asked a woman on the line like, what are you doing?

And she was like, it's a job fair.

And I said, oh, okay.

So I got in the line and at the time I would always carry around copies of my resume.

- Oh wow.

- So I had about 10 copies of my resume in my bag.

I stood on the line, I got up to the front and the woman Con Edison representative, she told me that they were hiring for HR representatives and I showed her my resume and she was like, oh, well you have an investigative background.

The department manager at the time who was hiring, he also had an investigative group.

She said, I would give your resume to him, but that's not what the job fear was for.

She did, she stood to her word, he contacted me, told me to apply for an opening, and that's how I interviewed and got the job.

- Yeah.

And so your first job, what was that like there?

- It was great.

I went into Con Edison as an investigator, so I investigated internal matters of business related matters and human resources.

So it was a great transition to the corporate workspace.

Being born and raised in New York City, I never thought about working for Con Edison, but it is the largest employer in New York City.

So coming into Con Edison and seeing all of what they offer just amazed me.

- Well, let's, let's drill down a little bit.

Give us a sense of the footprint and some of the services it provides to its customers.

- So Con Edison is an en energy delivery system, one of the largest in the country.

As stated, we have over 14,000 employees.

We also own Orange and Rockland Utilities and Rockland Electric Company, which services New York and also Northern New Jersey.

So it's a very huge footprint.

We light up New York City.

So you know, the things that people come into the cities to see in our enamored by, we have a large hand print in in making sure that happens.

So we power the city, we provide natural gas to homes and we also provide steam services to commercial businesses.

- You touch a lot of different industries in a lot of different facets of people's lives, you know, as an employee, how does that make you feel?

- That makes me feel awesome.

We have a very strong regional community affairs area in Con Edison.

So we have regional community affairs representatives assigned to each borough and each area.

So they have very strong ties with elected officials and the customers within that area to ensure that Con Edison is doing everything that we promised, and that's to deliver electricity and power to the areas that we serve.

- What was your succession or your next role in the company?

- So I was an investigator for about three years.

So I had several jobs of increasing responsibility.

I've managed our accommodations programs, I managed our retirement programs.

So I managed several programs throughout my career in human resources.

Then I moved over to become a field operations planner in stores operations.

So that falls under supply chain.

I was the first female stores operations planner in the company, which was a great opportunity and just allowed me to provide a different level of perspective being a female in that role.

And after that I went back to human resources as a department manager, all promotional opportunities and employee and labor relations.

So now most of the roles that I had, it had become full circle because now I was managing those opportunities that I had previously.

And from there, the company selected me in 2020 to be a part of a external fellowship.

So I did an external assignment through CEO Action for Racial Equity.

And through, when coming back to the company from CEO Action for Racial Equity, I landed the this position in supply diversity and supply chain sustainability.

But - I want to go back to this external assignment.

What was that all about?

What did you learn and how did you apply that once you came back in?

In-house?

- CEO Action for Racial Equity was a fellowship, a business coalition, first of its kind that was led by Pricewaterhouse Cooper.

And there were companies that are across the nation that went that either their company selected them or they applied for this role to be in this inaugural fellowship.

And what we did was we fought for the societal rights of African Americans, so the 47 million African Americans across this nation.

So we did it in a couple of areas of education, economic empowerment.

We did it in public safety.

So we made sure that we focused on public policies and corporate engagement strategies that we can bring back to our companies to support us internally and externally to create societal wellbeing for African Americans.

- I think that's phenomenal and we're gonna take a break here on Pathway to Success.

We'll be back in a moment.

- The African American Chamber of Commerce of New Jersey is your pathway to success.

We encourage you to visit our website@www.accnj.com or call us at (609) 571-1620.

We are your strategic partner for success.

- Welcome back to Pathway to Success.

I'm your host, John Harmon, founder, president and CEO of the African American Chamber of Commerce of New Jersey.

And our guest today is Toma Gadsden Shaw.

She is the director of Supply Chain Sustainability and Supply diversity for Con Ed New York and New Jersey.

You are now involved with supplier diversity.

Define that.

- So supply diversity at Con Edison is dedicated to the empowering of diverse businesses.

At Con Edison, we focus on minority owned, women owned and small businesses.

So small businesses includes veteran owned businesses, service disabled, veteran-owned businesses.

So it is our responsibility in supply diversity to ensure that we're incorporating diverse businesses into our supply chain.

So incorporating suppliers, diverse suppliers into our supply chain has been our goal for the last 55 years.

- So can you talk a little bit about your annual spend just globally to these businesses?

- Yeah.

So last year, con Edison spend approximately $570 million with minority and women owned businesses.

We also spend over $700 million with small businesses, although we have a lot of work to do, we have come a very long way when it comes to incorporating diverse suppliers into our supply chain.

- H how do you outreach and or get businesses connected to the opportunities?

- Last year we launched a program called Equity Roundtable.

So equity is spelled EQUI capital TEA.

And what we wanted to do is create transformational engagement and action for diverse suppliers.

When I first joined the team, one of the questions that I asked is, how do we get to the heart of what suppliers need?

At the time there was no, there was no true mechanism.

They had a lot of meetings with suppliers to talk about some of the concerns that they had or if they ran into Roblox, but it was never my intention to come into a role and be reactionary.

I wanted to be very proactive when it came to our engagement.

I want them to know who we are and I want them to know the amount of support that we will provide.

So I created these opportunities that we have round tables.

So we have them with about 10 to 12 businesses at a time.

We provide a level of access for them, bring in the user groups that are aligned with the services and goods that they provide, and also the procurement specialists to talk to them about immediate opportunities.

- Speak to some of the takeaways or the, the value that some of the participants received that they may have came back and shared with you.

- Absolutely.

So we provide them with feedback survey at the end of every equity round table.

And some of the things that we've heard so far was it's been one of the best engagements that they ever had an opportunity to participate in.

It allowed them a seat at the table with people who are real change makers and people who have the power to provide them with an opportunity.

We've had 70 equity round tables, so I know that it's working.

We had our third party risk management team come in to the equity roundtables and they onboard people in real time, which reduces the amount of time, the back and forth and allows for immediate placement on bids - With the African American Chamber of Commerce of New Jersey.

You all, we did a showcase or two talk about that and, and the takeaway from your side, and I'll share the feedback I got from my side.

- Absolutely.

So we coordinated what thank, thank you to Mary Griffin for her support and partnership in this.

So we partnered with the African American Chamber of Commerce of New Jersey to, to partner on two of these equity round tables.

From those equity round tables, we have been keeping stats on how many people were placed on awards and how many people were provided bids.

Some of the feedback that we were able to receive from that is some of them did receive awards.

We also heard from them that they appreciate the smaller setting and the opportunity to get in touch with the team.

And I, after the equity round table going forward, we plan to meet with Mary and team to provide monthly statistics on how the partners from the African American Chamber have been doing, specifically when it comes to being placed on bids and how many awards they received.

- So I can tell you I receive great feedback from the members of the Chamber about the level of engagement and oftentimes it's about respect being heard.

They also said that you guys were well represented from various departments and with people that had the wherewithal to give good advice, but also could call a shot or have decision makers in the room.

So kudos to you.

I thank you.

With that said, from your perspective, how do we get businesses to get on the path of success working through your process to be a vendor?

- So it's twofold bringing them to the table so they can, they can have a level of access, but also it's an educational opportunity for our internal users and people who may have different terms of bias of what they think a a, a small supplier or a diverse supplier looks like.

So removing that is one of the strategic points that I, I frequently want to make.

The other things that we all want to do is to create a level of support ecosystem around suppliers.

So hearing that level of feedback of what they need, because I wouldn't know, I, I don't know what it is that they need unless they tell me.

And that's one of the things that I really look forward to in helping to shape the future and the strategy of our supply diversity program.

- You know, we hear the term certification and some folks think once they get certified they just show up and Manna falls from heaven.

How do you deal with that conversation?

- Well, we, we only bring the best suppliers to the table.

Let's be clear.

And that's why we work with people like the African American Chamber and other partners that we work with to bring suppliers to the table.

It's very important for them to be able to strongly communicate what their capabilities are.

You have to come with a strong pitch, you know, to be able to share what it is that your company does.

And when I say strong, I mean strong and fast pitch about what your company does and how it can support our clean energy future.

You need to be able to be in partnership with us, know where we are going, and tell us how you can help us get there - And not talk about it, be about it.

I love it.

Absolutely.

- Yeah.

- So are there any intentional initiatives around second and third tier that you guys - Focusing?

Yes, we do.

So we have second tier strong commitments for our tier one suppliers.

We ask a lot of our suppliers in areas that typically people wouldn't ask for commitments in to provide up to 30% with MWBE spend, specifically with our professional services.

So in doing that, we have to create a level of education with our professional services firms as well.

But we have many who have committed to that 30% level of spend in an area that historically supply diversity programs will not even tap into.

So in addition to that, in every situation where there is over a certain dollar threshold, we do push for a 20% or 30% commitment because in order to be in, you know, to be in partnership with us, you have to be going in the same direction that we're going and we wanna be fish flowing in the same direction.

- Could you differentiate between supply diversity and business diversity?

- Sure.

So supply diversity is concerned with the diversity of the supply chain, bringing in diverse suppliers in the same level that you bring in a non-diverse supplier with business diversity, you are creating an ecosystem around that diverse supplier to support them in terms of their opportunities within the company, supporting them in anything they need when it comes to capital payment terms.

So it's creating a complete ecosystem around a level of support for what the supplier may need.

In order to grow and scale with your company, you have to have a shift in mindset.

You have to have an intent to provide a level of support to people who did not start at the same equal footing as everybody else.

So you have to recognize that.

And one of the other things that I think is very important is that you have to let your data drive your decisions.

It can't be, these are not emotional decisions that a company is making.

We are looking at our spend overall and who we're spending with.

We are in the community of New York, we are in the community of New Jersey.

These are very diverse areas.

So we want to make sure that we are being very intentional about looking like the communities that we serve.

- Tomma, can you speak to, are there specific opportunities today or, or specific type of vendors you might be looking for, for new opportunities?

- So at ConEdison we purchase a variety of things.

We purchase everything from small widgets to very large machinery.

We procure project managers, we procure consultant services.

So there are a lot of opportunities in Con Edison.

Currently what we are doing is the company is involved in a lot of clean energy initiatives.

So we are procuring for a lot of those initiatives right now to ensure that there are, there's, there's a diverse supplier base within those opportunities.

So we are building new substations over the next couple of years, which provides a wealth of opportunities for suppliers.

- So Toma, from your perspective, what is the future of supplier diversity from a ConEd standpoint?

- Well, at Con Edison, we are very committed to our DEI initiatives and we are standing 10 toes down in all of what we're doing going forward.

But for Con Edison and for Orange and Rockland, we are committed to diversity and we are committed to equity and we are committed to inclusion and we have no intent in backing down on these initiatives.

- You know, when you're having a great time, time flies.

I got a couple more questions and we're gonna bring this conversation to a close.

- Okay.

- Your relationship or con's relationship with the African American Chamber of Commerce?

- The partnership with the African American Chamber has been going on for seven years.

I've been with the department for two years and ever since engaging with you, John and Mary and Jacqueline, it has been an amazing partnership and just opened me up to a wealth of education and knowledge that I, I didn't, I didn't, wasn't once privy to - Tomba.

Thank you so much for being with us today.

- Thank you for having me.

- Until the next time when your pathway to success, this is John Harmon, founder, president and CEO of the African American Chamber of Commerce of New Jersey.

Today's president's message will and policy.

So the point I want to make, New York completed its disparity study.

Governor Cuomo took a page from Governor Patterson who was an African American who had a 20% minority goal and Governor Cuomo raised it to 30%.

New Jersey did a disparity study back in 2020.

It was concluded in 2023 and they still had not implemented a strategy.

That's where will comes in.

And now we're in the new year 2025 and we're hopeful that Will will kick in and and Trump policy if will takes the place of just trying to execute a strategy around policy.

I think we'll get in a better place in New Jersey to have a, a more equitable inclusion of black businesses ultimately making the state more competitive.

This is our commitment from the African American Chamber of Commerce to continue to press forward to ensure that black businesses and black people participate equitably in New Jersey's.

Economy - Support for this program was provided by Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey.