UPS reaffirmed its long-held commitment to diversity and inclusion by announcing a series of new initiatives aimed at increasing growth opportunities for diverse customer segments around the world. These initiatives include the development of a global effort to help women business owners gain access to world markets, a collaboration with the federal government promoting women’s economic empowerment, and the creation of a new marketing leadership position focused on diversity marketing.

“These initiatives will expand our capabilities within the small and medium-sized business space and leverage our global logistics expertise to help accelerate the growth of minority- and women-owned companies,” said Kevin Warren, UPS chief marketing officer. “Adding additional professional resources and new product and support programs is part of our focus on offering solutions that support small businesses in their goals.”

The newest initiative is a global effort to help women business owners learn about exporting. It’s called the UPS Women Exporters Program. The UPS Foundation is partnering with the International Trade Centre’s SheTrades initiative, which helps to train and connect women entrepreneurs with buyers around the world. For example, through SheTrades Argentina, UPS will work with Argentina’s Department of Economic Development to establish workshops to provide access to markets, knowledge and technical proficiency to women entrepreneurs. 

Additionally, UPS has created the role of vice president of marketing, diverse segments. This new position will help UPS advance its global commitment to diversity and inclusion, focusing not only on customers, but vendors, employees and communities as well.

UPS named Kathleen Marran, a 25-year UPS marketing veteran, to fill the post. Her role is to lead UPS’s efforts to deliver growth-oriented solutions to minority- and women-owned businesses around the world.

Marran will bring together the best of UPS, leveraging the company’s intelligence, data, leadership and expertise to help deliver growth-oriented and relatable connections and solutions to minority- and women-owned companies. She will also lead a newly created external advisory panel, which will focus on identifying and advancing opportunities for those businesses.

“Kathleen will bring critical international experience and perspective to this important new role,” Warren continued. “This position will be fundamental to the growth of our business and our people well into the future.”