Gurung Consulting is a certified Minority Business Enterprise. We're proud of that, but we also know the certification itself doesn't do anything for a client sitting across the table from us. What matters is what it enables — and it's worth spelling that out plainly, because supplier diversity is a goal a lot of organizations state and few operationalize well.
It's a procurement lever, not a favor
Many healthcare systems, public agencies, and large enterprises carry supplier diversity targets, sometimes tied to contracts, grants, or public reporting requirements. Working with an MBE-certified firm can count directly toward those targets. That's not a soft benefit. For a procurement or compliance team, it can be the difference between a vendor relationship that helps them hit a mandated goal and one that doesn't.
It changes how we bid, not just who we are
Certification opens access to set-aside contracts and diversity-focused RFP tracks that wouldn't otherwise be on the table. For clients running vendor selection processes with diversity criteria built in, that means we can participate in ways a non-certified firm of similar size and capability can't.
It doesn't change the bar for the work itself
This is the part we're most direct about: certification gets us into the conversation. It doesn't win the engagement. Fifteen years of program and project management experience across healthcare, pharmacy, supply chain, and IT is what we're actually asking to be judged on once we're at the table. We'd rather a client remember the migration that went smoothly than the certification that got us the meeting.
Certification opens the door. Everything after that is the same standard any other consulting partner should be held to.
If your organization has a supplier diversity target
If you're evaluating vendors for a program that needs to satisfy a diversity procurement requirement, we can usually provide documentation quickly and talk through how the engagement would be structured to count toward your goals. That's a separate conversation from scope and approach, and we're glad to have both.
Reach out if you'd like to discuss either.