Transparency with diversity is extremely important for organizations to scrutinize how they source talent and identify potential bias, but it’s only within the past few years that suppliers have been required to provide candidate diversity data, Osterhout notes. While disclosing diversity data has been mainstream in full-time employee hiring for most organizations, it is still not as common that suppliers providing external workers are asked to provide this same data in North America. To that end, he is devoted to working with suppliers to procure this data and helping them increase their diverse candidates.

Osterhout understands you have to ask the hard questions and engage in difficult discussions in order to effect change. Beyond his work within Enbridge, he’s very active in the DE&I space; he is known to host and attend events that support diversity, equity and inclusion and is a frequent participant on DE&I-focused panels. He is committed to creating safe spaces for people to have those hard conversations in order to ensure that diverse candidates — as well as suppliers — are given equal opportunities. “To me, being an influencer is to be an ambassador,” he says. “It’s very hard sometimes, but I can start where I can and grow from there and help others do the same thing.”