United Parcel Service Inc. (NYSE: UPS) has invested $270,000 into promoting women in the exporting industry as part of the more than $10 million pledged by the UPS Foundation last year to promote diversity and inclusion.
According to Kathleen Marran, who was recently promoted by the company to Vice President of Marketing, diversity segments, the money was presented to the International Trade Centre’s SheTrades program, which will work in tandem with UPS’ Women in Exports Initiative to provide opportunity to women in the industry.
“One of our core beliefs at UPS is that we should help create greater opportunities for inclusive trade. In our view, the solution should be to pursue a form of trade that gives small businesses, including women-owned businesses, more opportunities to thrive through trade,” Marran said in an email to FreightWaves. “With this in mind, our main goals through this partnership with the International Trade Centre and SheTrades initiative are to provide training and education opportunities that allow female business owners to better understand the complexities of exporting, ecommerce, trade regulations and trade agreements.
The program will provide outreach to promote growth of women-owned companies in markets across the world.
“We’re also focused on helping identify opportunities that provide female business owners greater market access to sell and trade as well as discovering opportunities for female-owned businesses to drive sustainable business growth,” Marran said. “UPS not only puts its subject matter expertise to work, but advocates on behalf of women-owned businesses access to markets and capital where constrained.”
UPS and SheTrades have already trained over 350 women globally, according to Marran, and have more upcoming projects such as SheTrades Argentina, through which UPS will work with Argentina’s Department of Economic Development to provide workshops and access markets, knowledge and technical proficiency to female entrepreneurs.
“Simply put – our employees are advocates themselves for their communities outside of work and are compelling UPS to do more and be more available to them,” Marran said. “At UPS, we’ve always been a company that has strived for a diverse workforce and culture – from the package handlers and drivers who deliver packages to your door every day to our corporate staff in our Atlanta headquarters.”
Marran hopes that UPS can lead by example and promote inclusion at all levels of the company and industry.
“[The] partnership is but one example of our long-held commitment to diversity and inclusion,” Marran said. “And we hope that by announcing a series of new initiatives, including this partnership, our employees and customers will be reinvigorated by the efforts our company is making to increase growth opportunities for diverse customer segments around the world.”