Dave Thomas is the Manager of Business Development and Supply Chain at HIRE360, a nonprofit organization that helps diverse individuals and business owners grow and develop in the construction industry.
Dave began a more than twenty-year career in 2000 as Supplier Diversity Manager for a partnership between BP Oil Company and Lend Lease that was responsible for the design and construction of all BP Oil gas stations throughout North America. He oversaw the supplier diversity program for this partnership until 2006. In November of that year, he became Supplier Diversity Manager at Nicor Gas. In this role, he helped Nicor to achieve unprecedented levels of supplier diversity performance which resulted in him receiving the Anders C. Rasmussen Award as "Supplier Diversity Manager of the Year” in 2008 from the Chicago Minority Supplier Development Council. Later that year, he became Executive Director of the MBDA Business Center, where he helped develop relationships between diverse businesses and corporations and government agencies. He remained in that role until September of 2021, when he left to join HIRE360.
Dave attended Roosevelt University and earned a Bachelor’s degree in Sociology and a Masters in Journalism.

Statement:

The importance of diversity in construction lies in what it does for our communities, and not what it does to them.