Curated in partnership with Counterpart
Growing as a mission-driven business can be a dynamic experience. We shared time with two women-founded companies that got into business for a greater good. Through exploring the way their brand identities have been strengthened and missions driven further through the innovation of tech integration, we had a chance to learn how scaling can deepen our missions as a business.
Lesley Crane, co-founder of DiversiFind, graduated from Butler University with Bachelor’s degrees in both Political Science and Spanish. She then attended law school at the Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law. From there, she went on to work at the Indiana General Assembly before she found her passion for supplier diversity as the Commissioner for the Indiana Department of Administration. As she and her co-founder, Megan Lawson, spent time pouring into diverse suppliers through consulting services, they (as they say), stumbled into tech. The two found a gap in accessibility to diverse suppliers, and DiversiFind was created.
Though tech was not the planned direction she envisioned herself going in, it’s been present since the company’s inception. She shares, “Since our product is technology at its core, we couldn’t do what we do without it. Our company was actually born out of the idea that technology could make it easier for diverse suppliers to grow their businesses if they couldn’t afford a consultant or staff to do it. We knew there had to be a way for technology to bridge that gap for small, diverse companies to show the world who they are and what they can do–and for larger companies that want to find them. DiversiFind’s technology was the tool we found to solve that problem, make a social impact, and foster inclusive economic growth.”
Because DiversiFind supports and amplifies the reach of diverse supplies, companies that hire them create a better ROI and fulfill their company missions every day. As Lesley has spent a lot of time educating companies about the value of doing business with diverse suppliers, she shares a few takeaways: “The data shows that doing business with diverse suppliers actually saves money year over year – 8.5%! That indicates significant economic benefits tied to intentional spending with diverse suppliers. Beyond that, those diverse suppliers come back to your company as customers or clients, so it is a win-win for both sides of the equation. We try to help people understand that doing business in this way will help their bottom line.”
Taking on a mission to further equitable economic growth through the championing of diverse suppliers is a big task to take on. As DiversiFind was looking to build this space with intention, there was a need for a partner who would challenge them and become a thought partner throughout the process.
“From our first meeting, everyone at Counterpart fully understood, not only our overarching mission, but the underlying steps we would need to take to achieve it. They also brought people to the table who filled in the gaps for us, asking us questions that would help make our product better, improving it every step of the way, from design to performance,” recalls Lesley as she spoke about building an innovative partnership with Counterpart, “We can get skills and competence from any company, but I need a team who is fully aligned with what we're trying to do. We needed to know that it is important to them. From the initial conversation, it was clear they were completely supportive of and would be shoulder-to-shoulder with us on making what we want to build.”
Not only has technology been a piece of their business’ core from day one, it’s also the key to creating equity in business. At the seamless intersection of the two, diverse suppliers are gaining the opportunity to directly market themselves to companies who are searching for diverse suppliers. She goes on to share this action “has the potential to help grow and scale their business. Growing and scaling has the potential to put them on the same playing field as any bigger, majority-owned business and I can’t imagine anything closer to true equity than that.”
Another company has similar aspirations of creating an equitable playing field. At Student-Ready Strategies (SRS), Sarah Ancel looks to examine the very same intersection of equity and technology. “At SRS, we believe inequities in student outcomes will persist as long as there are inequities among the higher education institutions that serve them. We know the institutions enrolling the largest percentage of Black, Latine, Indigenous, adult, and poverty-affected students often have the fewest resources and most limited capacity to innovate and transform,” shares Sarah.
Serving as the Founding Partner and CEO at SRS, Sarah Ancel works to accelerate the nation's progress toward a more equitable postsecondary system that serves all students. Previously serving as Senior Vice President for the national nonprofit Complete College America (where she provided policy consultation, delivered in-state technical assistance, and developed and launched a strategy for returning adults) and as Associate Commissioner for Strategic Planning and Policy for the Indiana Commission for Higher Education (where she was responsible for implementing the Commission’s strategic plan, including developing and advancing the Commission’s legislative priorities), she’s garnered quite an expansive knowledge of postsecondary education and hurdles faced by both students and faculty.
Sarah shares some of her findings with us: “Under-resourced institutions are already asking faculty and staff to do more with less, and making systemic, student-centered change requires even more of their time, attention, creativity, and motivation. Fortunately, our field has robust philanthropic support to add capacity at institutions, but scarcity of these resources is forcing the classic depth vs. breadth trade-off.” SRS looks to challenge this by helping colleges and universities change their internal systems to achieve more equitable student success and long-term economic impact. They differ from other consultants because they prioritize students in their work, leveraging their team’s diverse lived experiences to inform recommendations and support, customized to each institution, and focus on pragmatic action.
In five years, SRS has worked in 33 states and one US territory, supported 465 institutions, including 187 minority-serving institutions and 303 community colleges, and facilitated change for nearly 5 million students. They achieve this lofty goal by assisting colleges in switching to free or low-cost open-source options for student textbooks, shortening the time and cost of college for students through policies and processes that grant college credit through relevant work experience or military service, rooting out inequities in admissions, placement testing, credit transfer, and academic probation, and other strategies to assist students.
At SRS, they continue to find innovative ways to create a resource that can achieve a level of support with depth AND impactful support to institutions that will lead to greater educational equity nationwide. “One of the actions from our organizational equity framework is that we develop innovative approaches to technical assistance (i.e., support for colleges and universities) that address inequities in access and quality, expanding the number of institutions engaged in transformation, and achieving greater impact for students marginalized in higher education.” Sarah continues, “What that innovation looks like for us is changing the way institutions change. We have developed technology with the potential to achieve depth and breadth at the same time through our new ConstellationEd platform. Instead of traditional self-directed resources like toolkits with static examples and templates, it is a virtual change management platform that serves as responsive capacity support for busy professionals and facilitates the work for them.
SRS now has even more flexibility to customize support for institutions, blending high-touch support and self-directed work as well as synchronous and asynchronous efforts in the way that works best for each institution - leading to more equitable and customized institutional support.”
Because SRS is education reform, and not technology, Sarah emphasizes the importance for them to have a partner like Counterpart. “Throughout each of the sprints, they helped us think through the many strategic decisions we had to make for the build and acted as thought partners to help us analyze the pros and cons of those decisions. The company’s leaders were active participants in this process and always available to help navigate challenges,” notes Sarah.
As both these companies champion for diverse suppliers and equitable higher education opportunities through intentional change alike, they’ve had the chance to grow their mission with the assistance of technology in a way that has deepened their brand’s identities as well as their individual identities.
In a moment of reflection on SRS and its growth in identity, as they have innovated mission-aligned offerings, Sarah shared, “We truly believe that our new technology, ConstellationEd, reinforces what people know about SRS – we are creative and willing to try new things and create new models, we seek to solve practical problems, we strive to be highly effective, and we do all of that in service to the diverse students with complex lives that are the core of our mission.”
Lesley took a step back from brand identity and reflected on her individual identity through the evolution of DiversiFind and its impact; “I suppose my identity is stronger in that I have to be much more comfortable being uncomfortable. I often find myself in rooms where I might be the only – or one of a few – champions for diverse businesses. Or I might be the only person who understands supplier diversity and I have to be comfortable being alone in this way. There have certainly been times in my career where I’ve been the ONLY person in some category but as I’ve gotten older and more mature in my career, and particularly as DiversiFind has traveled along its path, I find myself more comfortable being the only anything.”
As business owners, brands, and individuals, there’s always something nerve-wracking to scale, to grow, and even to change how we serve. But as we’ve learned from DiversiFind and Student Ready Strategies, growing ourselves doesn’t have to mean we are changing our mission, but rather deepening the impact we might have. It isn’t a direct pivot to something else, but instead a new way to achieve what we’ve always set out to do, and we can do it in partnership and be stronger for it.
an interview with Lesley Crane of DiversiFind and Sarah Ancel of Student Ready Strategies by MORE Editors in partnership with Counterpart.
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