Meet the winners of this year’s Women in Supply Chain award.
For the past five years, Food Logistics and Supply & Demand Chain Executive have honoured and celebrated female leaders with its annual Women in Supply Chain award.
The awards honour female supply chain leaders and executives whose accomplishments, mentoring and example setting have created a foundation for women to achieve success in all levels of a company’s supply chain network.
This year, four winners were selected from the categories of Workplace Innovators, DEI Pioneers, Trailblazers and Rising Stars.
These winners are playing a significant role in closing the gender gap to pave the way for future female leaders in logistics, and are outlined below:
1. Kristy Bates – Overall Workplace Innovator
Kristy Bates, Senior Vice President of Revenue at sustainable third-party logistics (3PL) provider GoBolt has been named overall workplace innovator thanks to her initiatives around workforce development. During her time at the company, she has developed a mentorship programme that focuses on increasing communication and improving empathy, and created a Women’s Employee Resource Group.
“Essentially the Women’s Employee Resource Group is a voluntary employee-led group that fosters that diverse, inclusive environment that ladders up to the company’s missions, goals and values,” says Kristy. “We’ve done workshops around resilience, workshops around building confidence in the workplace. We share articles on career development and women in the workplace. It really has become a super supportive avenue for people to share ideas, challenge each other and get that support.”
2. Eileen Dabrowski – Overall Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) Pioneer
Werner Enterprises’ learning and development innovator Eileen Dabrowski was awarded overall DEI pioneer after forging a years-long strategy to make the trucking industry more diverse. She has previously worked in development and leadership and academia, and has been a DEI advocate her whole life.
“I think what the world needs to understand about DEI is that DEI isn’t about what we’re doing wrong as humans, and I think a lot of people are so scared to move forward or tackle or enter the DEI space because they don’t want to get it wrong, but not doing anything is actually often more detrimental than having a miss and owning it and learning from it,” says Eileen. “Every step forward is a step in the right direction. And I think one of the most important things people need to remember about DEI is, if you have people making a decision about a different group of people, or there’s no representation and access, meaning diversity of thought, diversity of humans involved in the decision, then you’re doing a disservice.”
Because of this, Eileen formed a culture club within Werner Enterprises, which involves a representative from each part of the organisation. These individuals serve as the voice of their respective departments – and the diverse populations that they serve.
3. Jennifer McKeehan – Overall Trailblazer
Jennifer McKeehan knows what it takes to put the customer first. Whether it’s listening and executing on their needs or providing speed and convenience on a consistent basis, her goal is always to give customers what they want in the timeframe they want it in.
As Senior Vice President of Transportation and Delivery at Walmart, Jennifer does just that. Her current focus is on further developing sustainable practice within the company.
“Net carbon emissions is a lot of what our customers are saying are important to them,” says Jennifer. “We’re transitioning from plastic to recyclable paper bag mailers. When you get that package to your doorstep, it’ll be coming in a recyclable mailer, and we estimate it’s going to eliminate 65 million plastic mailers and two tonnes of plastic from circulation in the US.
“We’re also really excited about our next-gen facilities. We now have technology in place that makes a box specific to the size of the thing you ordered. And so imagine, for all supply chain folks, let’s put more boxes on trucks, spend less emissions and save the cardboard by not creating a box bigger than you need,” she adds.
4. Lida Hakobyan – Overall Rising Star
Truck driver-turned entrepreneur Lida Hakobyan founded Freight Freedom when she discovered the gap in mentorship, quality and coaching in logistics.
“My goal was always to provide practical and actionable easy steps for people who can really put it into action and get the results,” says Lida. “The challenges that I faced being on the road are different from being a business owner. I had to learn sales, marketing, customer acquisition, customer relationship finances, all these regulations. I was hiring the drivers. I was doing safety and compliance. Then, as a freight broker, I had to acquire customers and choose reliable and trusted carriers. I got to learn a lot of stuff on my own.”
The four winners will be in person and on stage at this year’s Women in Supply Chain Forum in Atlanta, Georgia on November 12 and 13 to share their experiences, their journeys, their visions and provide advice for the future.
To learn more about the winners and runners-up of this award, visit Women in Supply Chain
Source: Supply & Demand Chain Executive
