A native of Steubenville, Ohio, who has spent 15 years specializing in supplier diversity is returning to the region to help one of the area's largest businesses increase its use of companies owned by minorities and women.

Eunice Sykes

But Eunice Sykes said her job as PNC Financial Services Group's new supplier diversity manager is helped by a robust second-tier program that encourages companies that have contracts with PNC to subcontract with minority-owned business.

Ms. Sykes said smaller suppliers can benefit from subcontracting because it gives them help in matching the standards and practices of the corporate world.

"I do a lot of coaching of suppliers," she said. "I tell them to watch what corporate procurers are doing and mimic that, so that they can present themselves as a solution."

But coaching doesn't mean coddling. "I'm pretty outspoken and direct with my suppliers," she said, "because I want them to be successful."

Ms. Sykes, 57, grew up in Weirton, W.Va., and taught at Weir High School before entering the business world.

"The strategy was for me to leave education, go out in the business world, find out what businesses wanted from my graduates, then go back and teach them," she said. But once she entered the business world, working in human resources at a steel mill in Weirton, she never went back to teaching.

"It got good," she said with a laugh.

PNC's diversity program began in 1989, fueled by the recognition that its growth into a regional entity with outlets in Kentucky, Indiana, Ohio and Delaware meant dealing with an increasingly diverse customer base.

Its ongoing work in diversity also is a function of its own role as a supplier, said Kerry Stith, director of vendor management. "Often in the request for proposal process, you'll see questions asking PNC to describe its supplier diversity program," he said.

Ms. Sykes reaffirmed a statement she made about diversity at a recent conference in Cincinnati: "The only thing certain is change, and we have two decisions to make -- whether we're going to embrace that change, or whether we're going to shy away and withdraw from that change."