Melanie Rhodes is the original founder of Diversity Spend Solutions. Her expertise in developing and implementing technological solutions to business problems comes from nearly 20+ years in leadership roles with Oracle Corporation, Deloitte Consulting Group, and finally Toyota Motor Corporation.

In 2006, she was introduced to Supplier Diversity while employed with Toyota and could immediately appreciate the impact of Supplier Diversity on communities that shared a similar background as her.

Fortunately, Melanie saw first-hand both the technology needs and resource constraints of the Supplier Diversity team and found herself enlivened by the opportunity to help the team improve their operational efficiencies by way of better business processes and technological solutions.

Her mission was too free-up as many resources to focus on the important business of Diversity to subsequently have a positive impact and opportunity on disadvantaged communities.

Seeing an opportunity to do this same type of work for other organizations, Melanie launched Diversity Spend Solutions in 2009. After gaining a few clients, Melanie realized the importance of empowering those clients to manage their own Diversity solutions.

She began the process of automating her business solutions through a software as a service model. She jointly developed her initial module after working with the Toyota Supplier Diversity Manager that indicated that he “wanted to push a button” to understand his Supplier Diversity achievement. Toyota has a world-class supplier diversity program, so the requirements were extensive. The solution subsequently saves Toyota over 756 annual labor hours.

Since building that one module, Diversity Spend Solutions now offers a comprehensive suite that have been developed over the years through collaboration with customer organizations that have either advanced or world-class supplier diversity programs.

Melanie has now shifted her focus to leveraging the results from the software solutions and translating those results into opportunities for new contracts for diverse suppliers.

Melanie can be described as highly service oriented, a subject matter expert in Diversity solutions, committed, loyal, patient and always focused on continuous improvement activities for her business, her team, and her clients.

Diversity Spend Solutions is not just a solution provider but are extended team members and partners to all their clients.