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Vernestine Davis is the President and Founder of Strategic Advantages, LLC., a consulting
firm specializing in Contracts, Contract Administration, Negotiations and Supplier Diversity
Program Development. This company was founded in July 2002. Ms. Davis has taught classes
on Effective Negotiations and has published an article in the March/April 2006 issue of MBE
Magazine entitled “Effective Negotiating”.
Vernestine Davis was the Supplier Diversity Program Director at MCI, where she developed the
Supplier Diversity Program at MCI, as there was no Program when she was first employed at MCI.
She was responsible for Supplier Diversity’s vision and strategy in relation to the utilization of
minority and women-owned business participation in MCI’s Procurement process. When she joined
MCI in 1983, she brought with her a wealth of procurement, contract knowledge and experience.
Some of the firms for which she worked as a Contracts Administrator/Manager are as follows:
Morrison Knudson Saudi Arabian Consortium
Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA)
Howard University
SAIC
MCI
These covered both private industry, defense contracts and knowledge of FAR.
In the area of Supplier Diversity, due to her leadership, MCI increased it’s spend dollars with minority
and women-owned companies from $14 million to more than $400 million from 1990 to 2002. Key elements to the growth and success
of these efforts were awards to diverse suppliers in non-traditional
areas such as legal, insurance, banking, temporary services and information technology.
As the program grew, Ms. Davis was responsible for more sophisticated measures, that were put into
place, which included the development of First- and Second-Tier Reporting, a diverse supplier database, Supplier Diversity
Annual Reports, procurement commodity strategies for Minority and Women-owned Business Enterprises (MWBE) spend, Mentor Protégé
Programs and the development of a Supplier Diversity Advocacy Awards Program.
MCI’s Supplier Diversity program had received, during her tenure, the MD/DC Minority Supplier Development Council (MSDC)
Corporation of the Year Award and the Pan Asian Chamber of
Commerce Corporation of the Year Award, among others.
Ms. Davis chaired the Professional Development and Education Committee of the Maryland/District
of Columbia Minority Supplier Development Council (MD/DC MSDC) for eight years. During that
time, a record number of Amos Tuck School of Business Scholarships were awarded to Minority
Business Enterprises (MBEs) to attend the Advanced Minority Business Executive Program at
Dartmouth College. She was also responsible for numerous scholarship awards to MBE’s to attend the Advanced Management
Education Program at the J.L. Kellogg Graduate School of Management, Northwestern University, and to the University of Virginia,
Darden Graduate School of Business
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