IAOP Leadership Hall of Fame Inductees Inspire OWS23 Attendees
Watch Camille Drummond's Acceptance Speech
Watch Kate Vitasek's Acceptance Speech
Speaking to a room filled with industry peers, the latest two IAOP Hall of Fame inductees both uplifted and challenged the attendees at OWS23 in Chicago to go out and make change with their inspiring messages when accepting the prestigious award.
In her video remarks, Camille Drummond, Senior Vice President for Global Business Services (GBS) at bp, urged each of the professionals to ask how much their organizations spends with diverse suppliers and encouraged them to increase that amount.
University of Tennessee faculty member, Kate Vitasek, a renowned author, educator, and consultant, challenged each of the attendees to “shamelessly share” their company stories of how they are doing things differently and changing the status quo.
The leaders were selected for IAOP’s highest honor by a committee of Hall of Fame members for their contributions to innovative management practices and collaborative business models as well as their contributions to society at large through measurable outcomes.
Energizing Executive Believes in the Power of Supplier Diversity
Drummond has led GBS for the integrated energy business since January 2018 and oversees 6,000 employees across three global and eight regional centers, providing finance, procurement, customer and HR services to bp's global businesses.
“The Hall of Fame is filled with exceptional leaders who work together to promote innovation and collaboration within our industry,” she said. “We need that collaboration and innovation even more as we try to solve the biggest challenges faced by the world.”
As bp is working to reimagine energy and realize net zero emissions by 2050, she spoke about today’s global challenges across all industries, including the pharmaceutical industry developing vaccines and global enterprises moving to remote work overnight during the pandemic.
“I have been in global services for the last five years and I never experienced such uncertainty and change,” she said. “This demands a whole different level of leadership and strategic thinking to navigate our team through constant change and increased digitalization and innovation. It’s important to lead our teams so we can embrace the change and adapt.”
Drummond shared her passions for creating opportunities for marginalized groups in the workplace and advancing bp’s ambition to reflect diversity inside the company. She is the executive sponsor for bp’s business resource group PEN (Positively Ethnic Network), previously chaired bp women’s network in London, has won a Black British Business award and has been named on several key ethnicity influencer lists.
“For me personally, good can always come from change,” she said. “As a single black female leader, I have always been passionate about opportunities for underrepresented communities – first it was gender and now, with more recent events, there is more focus on ethnicity and race.”
Drummond strongly believes in the value of increasing supplier diversity in supply chains to create more equity and generational wealth for diverse suppliers who lack access to corporate buyers.
bp has committed to spending $1 billion with diverse suppliers, she noted, encouraging the OWS attendees to find out what their companies are doing in this area and learn how they can make a difference.
Vested Advocate Stresses the Value of Sharing Stories
An international authority for her award-winning research and Vested business model for highly collaborative and strategic relationships, Vitasek is passionate in her quest to help companies transform their business relationships.
While her groundbreaking work that led to seven books and Vitasek has been recognized with many accolades, she says, her professional achievements would not be possible on her own.
Vitasek shared how early in her career as a graduate student she was awarded a full scholarship to go to Orlando, where she visited Disney’s Epcot Center. During her trip, this quote by American tennis player Althea Gibson caught her attention and stayed with her for life: “No matter what accomplishments you make, somebody helped you.”
When she set out to do research for the University of Tennessee funded by the United States Air Force and Department of Defense to find a “better way to outsource,” she knocked on the doors of America’s leading corporations to ask for their secret sauce.
And while Microsoft, P&G and McDonalds were doing amazing work, they were reluctant to share their work for her initial research.
“It was fascinating to me in that journey of understanding and learning from these companies that they didn’t want their story told,” she said. “It wasn’t because of competitive advantage. It was because they did things differently and didn’t follow the traditional wisdom.”
After three years, she finally convinced Microsoft to talk about their award-winning deal with Accenture, and P&G and McDonald’s followed in sharing their case studies, resulting in Vested Outsourcing: Five Rules That Will Transform Outsourcing.
“I wouldn’t be here today without those companies opening their doors and allowing us to tell their stories,” she told the audience members.
Since then, more than 250 organizations have taken the methodologies she teaches about bringing relationships into formal contracts and applied them to the organizations, including bp most recently.
“I am most proud of the organizations that have taken those stories as inspirations and the methodology that we share and make available and have challenged the status quo, and go forward to do things a little differently,” she said. “They are pushing the envelope on outcome-based thinking.”
Thanking everyone in the room for doing great things for the industry, she left them with this goal: “Share, share shamelessly, because that’s how we make the world a better place. Change the world one deal at a time.”
With the induction of Drummond and Vitasek, the ranks of IAOP’s Leadership Hall of Fame will grow to 57 professionals who have made significant contributions to the industry and society through their leadership, vision and innovation. The IAOP Leadership Hall of Fame induction ceremony was held during the awards reception at OWS23 on May 17 at the HCSC Conference Center in Chicago.