Supplier Diversity News
Success Story: Rence Meredith
January 26, 2022
Business growth often comes by sharing business successes
Grand Valley State University is interested in the growth of our business partners and is excited to share success stories, highlighting how our mutual goals are achieved by working together. Our business partners have a strong desire to meet our institutional needs and to bring innovation to our campus by collaborating with divisions and departments who steward University resources. This partnership is a result of relationship building and doing business and our desire is to share these stories to model lead practices and to share potential opportunities within our campus community.
Rence Meredith MBA, CEFP Assistant Vice President, Facilities Services - Allendale
At the onset of the pandemic in March of 2020 as a member of the GV Incident Management Team (IMT) Logistics branch I was put in charge of acquiring PPE for the campus community. Of course, every other business in the country was tasked with the same. I started reaching out to our current vendors to check on price and availability, with availability being the most important component to the request. We also initiated discussions about cleaning protocols and keeping the campus community safe and healthy. In a discussion with the owner (Tim Brom) of United Commercial Services, our cleaning contractor for portions of the Allendale campus and all of the Grand Rapids campuses, I asked if he had any good sources for masks both disposable and washable. He connected me with Katherine Huyen of Katt Medical located here in Grand Rapids. I reached out to Katherine and within a day she brought a prototype of the GV masks that have ultimately been given to every employee and student over the past 19 months. When it became apparent that masks were going to be a critical part of the pandemic, her company quickly shifted gears and within a couple days designed and prototyped the mask we ended up purchasing 30,000 of. Once the GV community started receiving and wearing he masks I started getting requests for Katherines contact information from individuals, businesses, Universities and K-12 school districts. We continue to purchase smaller quantities of masks for those who have either lost them or have worn the original masks out. Another fun part of the story is that we have provided the bookstore with almost 1000 masks to be sold in the Laker Marketplace. All proceeds from mask sales go to the GV student relief fund which helps support GV students who are in needed of food or financial assistance.