International Women’s Day 2023

In preparation for Ireland’s first ever Logistics and Supply Chain Skills Week, we were recently presented with a diversity reality check with less than 20% female participation across certain supply chain roles.

We know that this is changing, but notwithstanding, we are already blessed with some incredible female supply chain leaders who are at the forefront of the industry and leading its future thinking and development.  

With International Women’s Day this month, we have listed some of our favourite female supply chain leaders, globally and within Ireland, that are worth following as they shape the future of supply chain.

Global:

• Plan – Lora Cecere, founder of Supply Chain Insights, author, and thought leader in the area of enterprise supply chain planning, on her blog Supply Chain Shaman

• Source – Kate Vitasek, faculty member at the University of Tennessee, creator of the Vested Outsourcing model and author of multiple works on collaborative win-win business relationships

• Make – Revathi Advaithi, appointed as CEO of Flex in 2019 and shaping the future of sustainable manufacturing and enabling the circular economy

• Deliver – Hannah Kain, Founder of value-added logistics provider – ALOM, with over 25 years of delivering supply chain excellence across a global network. Passionate about supply chain and promoting the role of minority and female owned businesses

• Return – Deborah Dull, Founder of the Circular Supply Chain Network, author of Circular Supply Chain: 17 common questions and true advocate of circular supply chain models

• Sustainability – Sherri Hanish – also known as the Supply Chain Queen, is a true global influencer on global sustainability, diversity and inclusion, and circular supply chain

Of course, with any list, the more people that we mention, the more we can say with certainty that we are missing equally worthy inclusions on the list.

Irish:

Ireland enjoys a prominent position within the global supply chain, and this is largely due to the quality of leaders – male and female – that we have been able to consistently provide over a period of several decades. 

Today, we wanted to recognise a small number of highly respected female supply chain leaders who are at the forefront of our industry.  In addition to driving economic success, these leaders have also demonstrated the power of supply chain to be a force for good in the world, addressing sustainability, healthcare, poverty, and food waste.

We are only scratching the surface with this list, but we invite you to treat it as a starting point and add others in the comments below.

Cathriona Hallahan – Retired managing director of Microsoft who led their EMEA operations team and now supports several companies as a non-executive director

Iseult Ward and Aoibheann O’Brien – Co-founders of Foodcloud, tackling food waste by connecting food supply chains and businesses with charities and community groups

Melissa Fisher – General Manager of Viatris in Ireland, leveraging supply chain capabilities to drive innovation in order to improve patient access to affordable medicines and care

Dr. Anne Cusack – Co-founder and former CEO of Critical Healthcare, managing the supply chain for pre-hospital emergency care organisations across Europe

Janice Scully (nee Wolfe) – Highly respected supply chain leader in the multinational food and beverage industry and true leader on sustainability and diversity issues

Jaime Jordan – General manager of the Midleton Distillery in Ireland as they embark on the development of new carbon neutral distillery operation

Joanne Mellon – Logistics Director for BWG Foods and National Distribution Centre, progressively transitioning their fleet to electric, biogas and other clean energy vehicles

Aine Heffernan – Corporate Vice President of AMD Global Customer Operations and promoter of STEM in education for the next generation of female leaders

Donna Marshall– Professor of Supply Chain Management at UCD, and inspiration for the next generation of leaders on the need and potential to address sustainability through supply chain

Tetyana Buhera – Global Account Director with Flex who took the lead in coordinating an Irish logistics industry response to delivering much needed aid to Ukraine in 2022

We are also blessed with our own female supply chain leaders within PerformanSC, and we thank them for their daily inspiration as we embark on our own journey to maximise supply chain performance.