UC Procurement Services Summer All Hands Meeting

The UC Systemwide Procurement Services team held this year’s Summer All-Hands conference at UCSF’s Aldea Center, a beautiful venue in the hills above Parnassus, nestled among the eucalyptus and redwood trees. All virtual team members came together for this meeting, where the morning focused on the next major chapter in our UC Procurement journey, SC500. Laurie Wolkow, Nik Neu and Sara Kayser led the team through a presentation addressing where we’ve been, where we are, and what’s next, while Dylan Paul played Richard Dawson in three rounds of Family Feud, quizzing the group on the newly presented SC500 facts.

In the afternoon, we were fortunate to have GEP, the awardee of our Upstream Technology RFP, provide an on-site demonstration of the technology that will play a vital role in our SC500 mission. UC’s new partnership with GEP will bring all systemwide Procurement resources enhanced technology capabilities in the areas of spend analysis, supplier registration, sourcing and contracting.

The UC mission statement emphasizes supporting teaching, research, and public service across the University. Focusing specifically on the public service aspect of the mission, we introduced the opportunity for staff to give back to the community through the collection and donation of toiletry items to St. Anthony's Toiletries for the Tenderloin program.  This new activity will be added to each All Hands meeting, with teams competing to see who can collect the most number of items for donation. The UC Procurement Team is happy to have a formalized ongoing activity where we give back to a city that is home to many of our UC constituents.

The day ended with recognition to the Starlight Award winners, as we monitored the World Procurement Award results in London where our CPO, Bill Cooper, was present. While it would have been a perfect ending to the day to win the Cross-Functional Transformation Award, being on the shortlist for the second year in a row was still an honor.

All Hands Committee Members

Erin Riley, Peter Ucovich, Giesel Velez, Elise Chan, Dylan Paul, Rachel Sievert, Rose Liu

Systemwide Procurement Team