Women in Logistics: How Supply Chain Leaders are Changing the Conversation

In our newest podcast episode, we talked with Katie Date, Leader of the Women in Supply Chain Initiative, MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) Center for Transportation & Logistics, and Alicemarie Geoffrion, President of Packaging, DHL Supply Chain. During their conversation, they touch on topics ranging from work-life balance to how to navigate a male-dominated industry as a woman.  

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:10

Welcome to All Business No Boundaries, a collection of supply chain stories by DHL Supply Chain, the North American leader in Contract Logistics. I'm your host, will Haying. This is a place for in-depth discussions on the supply chain, challenges keeping you up at night. We're breaking beyond the boundaries that are limiting your supply chain. This episode is Women and Logistics, how Supply Chain Leaders are Changing the Conversation. We are joined by Katie Day, leader of the Women and Supply Chain Initiative at the M I T Center for Transportation and Logistics. And Alice Marie Jeffrey on President of Packaging at d Hhl Supply Chain. Let's dive in.

Speaker 2: 0:48

So welcome to you both. Happy elated International Women's Day. I'm glad that you're both with us. And I think where I'd like to start is if each of you could kind of give a brief intro of yourself and you know, kind of limited to what your role is today, where you work, and then we'll talk a little bit more about your careers as we get into the discussion. So Katie, could you kick us off?

Speaker 3: 1:09

Yes, absolutely. Thank you so much for having me. Again, my name is Katie Date and I am the leader of the Women in Supply Chain Initiative at the M I T Center for Transportation and Logistics. I started this initiative in 2017 at the Center with the mission really to provide opportunities for mid-career women to have programming and networking to help get them over the hump and retain them in the supply chain. Another part of this initiative is also a full tuition fellowship that we grant to one very deserving young lady for our supply chain management master's program. And we grant that once a year in collaboration with the awesome organization. So I'm very happy to be here today and to discuss more about this initiative and women in the supply chain.

Speaker 2: 2:07

Awesome, that's great. We're really happy that you joined us and we're happy for flooding relationship with M I t. Alice, can you introduce yourself?

Speaker 4: 2:15

Sure. Alice Marie Jeff, I am currently the president of packaging for d Hhl Supply Chains North America region. I've been with d Hhl Supply Chain for almost 11 great years and I've had multiple roles over those years and currently, um, I'm super excited to be talking today about the women in supply

Speaker 2: 2:35

Chain. Yeah, so Women in supply chain has been a popular topic in the media and I know within our own organizations the last time we met we were in Las Vegas at the Manifest Conference and we had I think about 800 people at that Women in Logistics lunch. And you were both great feature guests for that. I wondered what were your impressions of that event?

Speaker 3: 2:56

So I'll, I'll comment first. You know, I thought it was an amazing event organized by the manifest organization. It was so inspiring for me to look out at the audience and see a sea of not only women but also men there to, to support the women in their organization. And you know, it, it was a variety of different ages and just the energy and enthusiasm from all of the participants was contagious. And I'm sure Alice Murray will agree, but the questions that people asked both during the q and a as well as coming up to us after we're just so thoughtful and it really solidified for me the importance of having events like this having initiatives within the supply chain because in a lot of cases women just need to see other women in positions of leadership to, to really dream and inspire themselves to get to those levels

Speaker 2: 3:58

As a woman in a pretty senior position at a big organization. What'd you think about the event?

Speaker 4: 4:02

I mean, I think everything Katie said I absolutely agree with. I thought the event was amazing. I think one of the most interesting things that has come out of this is the continued conversation and the continued connections that are happening outside of that event because people were so inspired about the stories that they heard and about women in supply chain. So I know for me personally, I have just been on LinkedIn and it's been continuous about the conversations, people trying to understand more about supply chain and about women in supply chain and it hasn't ended yet and that event was several weeks ago. So I think that it made a really great impression on so many women as well as men for that event.

Speaker 2: 4:48

Yeah. So maybe kind of backing up in a little more perspective on your respective careers, Alice Murray, you've done a number of things. I know that you've shared with the audience at the event and with me kind of offline, it's a pretty interesting story. Can you kind of take us through some of the highlights of the things that you've done in your work life?

Speaker 4: 5:10

Sure. So I actually started my career in consulting and I was a strategy consultant initially and it was awesome because I was exposed to a lot of different areas. Supply chain was one of them. Throughout my consulting career, I later moved into the IT world mainly because I was super excited about the.com industry and I got into web-based solutions. So really developing solutions that were helping companies manage both their internal and external workflows from an e-com perspective. So that was also very exciting cuz at the time there was no technology out there that was readily available. There was no open source code like we have today where you can easily build e-com solutions. So it was a industry that was evolving and I found that extremely exciting that we were doing something very new for the organization and really, um, helping leverage technology just to change the way that we work across the business. Um, I then later moved on to D H L supply chain in a strategy role and worked with you will in that role. And I mean that was also quite exciting and was able to just work across all different sectors and just learn quite a bit about the business while also contributing from a strategy perspective. Then I moved into a global solutions role and so I think what's really great about D H L supply chain is that there are so many global opportunities and before being in that role, I really didn't have a lot of exposure to other regions. But being in that global solutions role really connected me to other regions and connected me to understand how different cultures work, how different people interact with each other across the globe. And it gives you a completely different perspective of the business world and you start to have an appreciation of how we work here in the US and how different companies work across Europe and Asia and so forth. So that eventually led to me joining our consumer sector, which is where I took a packaging operations role. And that was also very different from my perspective because I had not necessarily been embedded in operations from that perspective. I had always been in it or in strategy or things around that, but just being in the operations really gave me exposure to things I had not seen before. You know, being on the floor, setting up production lines, doing things that were very detailed to really learn how the operations work, but also to understand how important it is that we have the right technology, we have the right processes, we have the, the right, um, people in place in order to make all of that successful. So ultimately that led to my current role, which I'm now focused on packaging for North America and really trying to grow that. But I think that what's really important is that you can always learn new skills and you can always try different avenues in your careers because ultimately it's all helping you and it's helping the organizations that you're working for become much more knowledgeable and better.

Speaker 2: 8:14

Great, thank you for that. And Katie, you're pretty interesting destination now. Tell us how you got there.

Speaker 3: 8:20

Yeah, absolutely. So prior to coming to m I t in 2014, I was in industry for about 10 years in a variety of different roles, operations, I did some sales. Um, I was in training and development for a little bit and ultimately came to my role at m i t in in 2014 to be the bridge, if you will, between our corporate partners and the researchers in the center. They identified me as someone who, who could uh, you know, strike up a conversation and provide really great, really great connections between industry and, and the researchers. And prior to coming to M I t I had been in pretty male dominated industries, but I had never really noticed it. You know, I always was a high performer, I always succeeded. And then I came to m i t in this role in supply chain and pretty consistently despite me having a seat at the table, it was all guys in these leadership meetings. You know, we were bringing in top supply chain leaders from throughout the supply chain companies, real big companies. And a lot of the meetings, I was the only woman at the table. So in true fashion I, I started to ask some questions and so when there were women leaders that came to these meetings, I would ask them and learn their story. How, how did you get to the place that you were, what lessons have you learned? And so in 2017 I formalized that I launched the Women in Supply Chain initiative. I did a survey of about a hundred female leaders from within our partner companies and asked a variety of different questions, you know, a very quick survey but, but got some very insightful themes that came out of it. And the four kind of main themes that I learned were around balance and kind of lack thereof around the power of networking. And networking doesn't necessarily mean that you're going to networking events cuz you know, different people have different personalities and there's a variety of different ways that you could network within your organization. The difference between sponsorship and mentorship, which I still think is something that's not talked about nearly enough. And then last is the importance of global teams and global assignments of all of the leaders that we surveyed, the majority of them had taken a global assignment in their career and that global assignment is what really can be attributed for their ability to grow in their roles. And it makes sense, right? Supply chain is global and when you have a view of your supply chain from a global perspective, you're gonna be a lot more effective. So we took those uh, four themes and we did our first women in supply chain summit hosted by Converse in 2018 and we brought together about 125 women and had some keynote talks, we had some panel sessions, some workshops, but really came away with a really strong network of women supporting other women. So it's been a very interesting journey over the, the past, you know, five and a half ish years of this initiative with the pandemic sprinkled in the middle of it. But I'm so excited to continue this initiative and continue working with women throughout the supply chain like, like Alice Murray.

Speaker 2: 12:04

Yeah, exciting stuff for sure. And I'm gonna cherry pick a couple of your survey themes there. So Alice Murray, I know you talked at the manifest lunch about some international experiences you've had. You mentioned a global role that you had within D H L, but I think there was something in your consulting career where you had kind of taken a bit of a flyer on an international project.

Speaker 4: 12:25

Yes, yes. So early on in my career I was posed with an assignment in South Africa and I was super nervous because I had never been to South Africa. But also the assignment was very new to me, so it was m and a work and I was very new in the career so had not had any exposure to that. And so when I went over to South Africa I did not know what to expect. I had not even ever probably spoken to anyone from that country. And so I was a little hesitant at first, but after going there I realized, you know, how important it was because first of all I learned a lot about the culture and that is something you can't read about. Um, you really have to experience it. And at the time I was going that was when um, Nelson Mandela had taken over and he was president and they were evolving as a nation and trying to figure out different ways of working together. And so I worked with people from different backgrounds and different races, which I was told before, um, if I had come earlier that would never have happened. And so it was just very interesting to me that they were evolving as a nation as I was of course evolving my consulting career. But I still believe that that was one of the most valuable experiences cuz you just need to experience that to really understand how different different nations are. And then from a work perspective, people do work differently across the globe. And I think it was really important for me to work with individuals very early on in my career that were from a different country because it gave me an understanding that people are different, they are diverse and we need to embrace that and also really respect the differences a across the globe as well. So I absolutely was so happy that I took that assignment because it was such a great learning experience for me both personally and professionally.

Speaker 2: 14:26

Yeah, and we're happy you came back<laugh>. Um, yeah. So, uh, Katie, I wanna talk about balance and you, you mentioned that you had gotten some feedback about that in your survey. I think it's a pretty prevalent topic. I, I mean I know there was the book about having it all and really looking at it from a woman's perspective, but I I almost wonder if it's a dual working household kind of situation as much as a gender one. I just wonder what your thoughts are. I know you've got a, you know, relatively new young family and I think your spouse works. Yeah. What's it like for you personally and then what have you seen in your learnings at m i t?

Speaker 3: 15:02

So yes, so for me personally, I have a two and a half year old and we both work and it's really a balancing act, not so much balance. Uh, you know, we, it's all about communication and you know, people, people always said in the beginning, it's gonna be tough and the biggest thing is you have to communicate with each other because otherwise it creates resentment, right? And the biggest thing I think that we've learned is each week one of us is always gonna have to bend a little bit more than the other, but as long as we understand that it's for the greater good and that, you know, maybe I'm picking up more of the childcare slack this week because Jesse has to travel or maybe two weeks from now, you know, I fly off to Vegas again. No, I'm just kidding. Um, but seriously, when I, when I was in Vegas and was at the conference, it was important for me to be able to be there and be present and you know, he was 100% mom, dad, everyone while I was gone. And we just really had to come to an understanding. And since we've, we were kind of the first of our friend group to have a child and since we had a child, we've had a couple of friends that have had children. And that's the thing that we always tell them, you need to communicate and you can't resent each other in terms of lessons that I learned from the different interviews that we did and from the survey, same thing. Like there is no such thing as balance. It's, it's perfectly imbalanced and you just need a partner in crime and maybe it's, maybe it's not your spouse, maybe it's the the grandparents or, but you need someone else to be able to share the burden with because I think as women we try to think that we can take it all on and we can do it all. And as I've seen with a lot of professionals in the supply chain, you know, the pandemic burnt them out. It was tough, tough period for a lot of people. You know, cuz the supply chain is 24 7, it, it doesn't shut off. And when you have a fifth grader at home who needs help with their math and you haven't done math in 20 years, like it's stressful. So being able to rely on someone, you know, I hate the, it takes a, a village, but it's, it's true and you have to accept the imbalance and expect, accept and expect the, the imperfection. I think for me and for a lot, lot of women that I've talked to, accepting that, you know, it's, it's not always gonna look pretty but as long as you get it done that's what's important.

Speaker 2: 17:57

Yeah. Alice Marie, I think you've got a family situation which is a little bit different. I know you have a very interesting partner in crime, but can you tell us about him and<laugh> and your family and some of the choices that you guys have made over the years is you guys have both progressed, you know, fairly senior level careers.

Speaker 4: 18:13

Yes, so he's definitely interesting. So when we first had our first child, my husband actually started his own business and he was a consultant like I was but was also a superb photographer. So he decided he was going to start a digital wedding photography business in Chicago because he knew that he could work on weekends and process images at night and so forth. So I stayed in my role and kept the day job and he started this business so that we could sort of tag team with the children was not ideal And it certainly was stressful of course at times. But you mentioned something Katie that I found really interesting and you talked about communication and one of the things that my husband used to do every night before I'd leave the office, he would send me a long email of every single thing that happened during the day. And I mean everything, how many loads of laundry were done, how many dishes were clean, what kid did what, who, who was being good, who was, who was not being good and you know, all of this information. And it was kind of an overload to me when I was about to leave the office and I was like, wow, what went on? I don't know if I need to read this all or if I can read this all now, but the whole point of it was is that he wanted me to be able to walk in the door and know exactly what took place during the day with the children and we have four young children at the time so that I could kind of continue the exact same parenting style that he had and continue exactly what he was doing so that the children didn't have a, a mom way of doing something and a dad way of doing something. So we had that going on and we did that for about 10 years. And then my husband went back into the corporate world and our kids were a bit older and at the time we moved to Columbus and I do have some family here as well. So like you mentioned, it does take a village. Katie and I did have my parents that live close by and they then sort of took on a lot of help, I would say responsibilities for us. And at one point I think my kids' friends at school thought my parents were their parents because they said, gosh, you have such old parents and my children told me this. And I was like, why do they think I'm so old? I mean I'm not that old. And later on my kids came home and said, actually they thought grandma and grandpa were our mom and dad<laugh> and now they think our grandparents are young. So it was just all different perspective and it just, you know, let me realize, you know, how much support I really do get. I'll throw something else in there. My father makes us dinner every night as well. So I have a lot of extra support because they knew that we really needed some help cuz cuz we were both now working, you know, quite a bit of hours during the daytime, but we still wanted to make sure that the kids were taken care of. So it was definitely a very unique situation, but certainly worked for us.

Speaker 2: 20:58

Yeah. So speaking of support, and I'm thinking now more at the inside the workplace and Katie, your your distinction between sponsors and mentors, what does that mean?

Speaker 3: 21:09

Yeah, absolutely. So a really easy way to think about it is a sponsor is someone who is usually two or three levels above you, who, when you're not in the room and they're having strategic conversations about who you know gets the next promotion or who should take on a big project, they're that person that's mentioning your name. This is not someone typically that you have a personal relationship with. This is not someone who you'd probably, you know, pop into their office and take out to lunch. Probably not someone you would go into their office and start crying if you're having a bad day. You know, this is really someone who's a couple, a couple levels above you and who you have a very professional relationship with, but they know exactly the worth and value that you have to the organization. Whereas a mentor, maybe someone who is above you, maybe someone on the same level may be below you, and that's someone who, if you're having a bad day, you can go and you know, you can really vent to them, but they're also somebody who will advocate for you in the workplace. And I think particularly in smaller workplaces where things tend to be more informal, sometimes people mistake the two and it actually can cause some, you know, career suicide in some ways because maybe that person in the senior position doesn't maybe take you quite as seriously. So it's, it's always kind of a warning that I put out to particularly our new graduates, just to be careful when you start to develop relationships within the organization to make sure that definitely you have lots of mentors, whether they're in your organization or outside, but always make sure that there's somebody that's a couple levels above you who knows who you are and knows the worth that you can provide. So when you're not in the room, they're saying your name,

Speaker 2: 23:09

Alice Marie, can you think of times when you've either identified or had good relationships with a sponsor and or mentor or maybe examples where you didn't?

Speaker 4: 23:19

Yes, no, I definitely, in my career throughout all different, I would say stages of my career, I felt as if I always had a mentor because there was always someone that I knew I could go to and speak to them about questions, things that I wasn't sure how to approach my managers with and so forth. So I absolutely had that throughout my career. I would say I probably, probably didn't get sponsorship till later in my career and I feel like I didn't really know what that was. And then ca, you know, I think Katie, as you explained that sometimes people get confused if you work at a smaller company. At one point I worked at a smaller company and I think that I may have thought that I had a sponsor, but I really had a mentor. But as I progressed and went into larger organizations, I definitely realized that I know that there were sponsors out there that were making sure that people recognized different skill sets that I would have. And I think that's probably one of the reasons why I was able to move into many different areas in my career because people understood that and my sponsors understood that I had different skillsets than what my current role may show, but both extremely important from a career perspective for me.

Speaker 2: 24:34

Yeah. Good. Well, I think we could talk for hours<laugh>, about this stuff and I think the energy that you guys kicked off at Manifest and continues to this day is emblematic of that. So I do wanna wrap now and thank you both for joining another great chapter in the discussion between the two of you that hopefully we can keep going into the months and years to

Speaker 4: 24:54

Come. Yes, thank you so much. Thank you so much. I really appreciate the opportunity.

Speaker 2: 24:59

All right, good. Well have a good rest of the day and a good rest of Women's month.

Speaker 1: 25:04

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