![On the "Sound of Ideas," we discuss Cleveland Clinic and UH teaming up on mentorship program for local women and minority-owned businesses in the supply chain sector. [Pixel B/shutterstock]](https://npr.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/b50efff/2147483647/strip/true/crop/3000x2000+0+0/resize/840x560!/format/webp/quality/90/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fnpr-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2Flegacy%2Fuploads%2F2022%2F7%2F28%2Fshutterstock_1009340218.jpg)
This week, two major healthcare institutions, the Cleveland Clinic and University Hospitals, announced that they are joining forces to help strenghten the diversity links in the supply chains they use. They're creating a business mentorship program for minority and women-owned businesses that might one day do business with them.
The initiative is called the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Supplier Accelerator Program, and it will provide training and mentorship to a group of five business owners from traditionally underrepresented populations from now until November.
The goal is to improve these business and allow them to have a better chance at landing contracts not only with the two healthcare systems, but with other customers. DEI supply chain efforts have been big success at companies like UPS and Coca Cola.
On top of the training and mentorship, each participant in the program will be awarded $10 thousand upon completion of the program.
We'll start the "Sound of Ideas" by learning more about the effort as we talk to leaders from the two healthcare systems. And in a few minutes, we'll meet some of the entrepreneurs in this first cohort.
Stay tuned as we'll be talking later with a specialists from another Cleveland hospital system, MetroHealth, about efforts to train Ukrainian doctors in burn care, an unfortunate necessity as Russia continues to bomb Ukranian locations. A UH doctor, of Ukrainian decent, arranged the visit and he'll join us as well.
-Stephen Downey, Chief Supply Chain & Patient Support Officer, Cleveland Clinic
-Chad Fleischer, VP of Supply Chain, University Hospitals
-Gil Kudrin, Owner, Nightsweats & T-cells
-Halle Jones Capers, President, Halle's Engineering
-Tommy Farmer, Co-Founder, CarTeCor Management, LLC
-Dr. Taras Mahlay, MD, Internist, University Hospitals
- Andrew Neading, Burn Program Coordination, MetroHealth
-Kabir Bhatia, Senior Reporter, Ideastream Public Media
-Neil Zurcher, Journalist and Author
