DEI Pioneer: Why Access, Storytelling, and Pipeline Building Define the Next Era of Supply Chain Leadership | Women in Supply Chain Forum Award 2026

I was named the overall winner of the DEI Pioneer category at the 2026 Women in Supply Chain Forum™ Awards, presented by Food Logistics and Supply & Demand Chain Executive. This recognition honors the work behind Supply Chain Revolution, the SCQ Fellowship, Women of the Revolution, and nearly two decades of building platforms that make sure the next generation of supply chain leaders reflects the world where systems and diverse people can thrive.

DEI Pioneer: What This Award Represents

The Women in Supply Chain Forum™ Awards recognize women who are shaping the future of the supply chain industry. Being named the overall DEI Pioneer is deeply personal, because this work did not start with a strategy. It started with a gap I experienced firsthand.

I am a first-generation college graduate. No one in my family worked in supply chain, let alone had the professional networks that accelerate a corporate career. When I eventually rose through IBM and EY to senior executive roles leading global sustainability and supply chain functions, I recognized how much of career trajectory depends on access: access to mentors who operate at the highest levels, access to real projects rather than theoretical internships, and access to the networks where doors actually open.

This award recognizes the programs I have built to close that access gap—the SCQ Fellowship, Women of the Revolution, the Supply Chain Revolution podcast—and the principle that drives all of them: the systems-level change I advocate for requires a pipeline of leaders who bring diverse perspectives and lived experience to the table.

The SCQ Fellowship: Building the Pipeline

The SCQ Fellowship is a hands-on professional development program for early-career women entering supply chain, marketing, and sustainability. Fellows receive direct mentorship from me, operational ownership of real deliverables across media production, creative marketing, editorial strategy, and community engagement, and exposure to industry leaders through podcast production, event support, and partnership programming.

I intentionally recruit women who might not otherwise have access to any of this. The 2026 cohort includes fellows leading media operations, creative marketing, and community programming, each building a portfolio that translates directly into career advancement. This is not an internship where someone shadows. Fellows own the work.

Women of the Revolution: Restructuring Who Our Industry Recognizes

In 2026, I launched Women of the Revolution, honoring 65 women across six continents and three tiers. The program was not simply a celebration of achievement. It was a deliberate use of narrative to restructure who our industry recognizes, promotes, and invests in.

The most powerful use of storytelling is not telling your own story. It is telling the stories of the people the industry has overlooked. I tell women all the time that their story is their strategy. The ability to own your narrative, to speak with authority about what you have built and what you believe, is not a soft skill. It is a core skill. I have built an entire platform around making sure more women shine and have a stage worthy of their voice and contributions.

The Perspectives Behind the Work

As part of the award, Marina Mayer, editor-in-chief of Food Logistics and Supply & Demand Chain Executive, asked me a series of questions about technology, career, and the future of supply chain. The answers reflect the perspectives that drive everything I build.

On emerging technology

Generative AI has fundamentally changed the operating model for independent advisory work. I use AI-powered tools across every pillar of my platform, from podcast production and editorial workflows to scenario modeling for clients navigating supply chain disruption. The ability to synthesize regulatory intelligence, stress-test strategic assumptions, and produce research-grade output at the speed my clients require has compressed what used to take teams of analysts into work I can deliver as an independent, strategic advisor competing with firms that have thousands of consultants. But judgment, context, know-how, and the ability to execute while bringing others along cannot be replaced by AI despite what you may hear or read.

I remain deeply focused on the convergence of digital twins, satellite-enabled supply chain monitoring, and what I call planetary intelligence: the integration of climate data, geospatial analytics, and operational decision-making into a single strategic layer, particularly upstream. This convergence is where the next wave of competitive advantage lives for enterprises serious about resilience and decarbonization.

On the supply chain trend that will define the next five years

The forced redesign of global supply chains around geopolitical risk, nature, and new economics will define the next five years more than any single technology. We are living through a period where trade policy, tariff regimes, and industrial policy are shifting faster than most enterprises can reorganize their networks.

What makes this moment different is the simultaneity: geopolitical fragmentation is happening at the same time as accelerating climate regulation, AI-driven automation of knowledge work, and the collapse of assumptions about where value can be created and captured. I use a framework I call the collapse of the assumption framework to help leaders see that the planning premises they built their supply chains on—stable trade corridors, predictable regulatory environments, abundant low-cost labor—are disintegrating in parallel, not sequentially. The organizations that recognize this will build adaptive, geopolitically tiered supply networks. The ones that do not will spend the next five years in reactive mode.

On the one supply chain challenge to solve overnight

I would close the implementation gap between sustainability commitments and operational reality. The industry does not lack ambition. Trillions of dollars in net-zero pledges, circular economy commitments, and Scope 3 reduction targets exist on paper. What is missing is the operational infrastructure to execute them: the data systems, the supplier capability, the financial mechanisms, and the leadership courage to absorb short-term cost for long-term value creation.

On the skill that made the biggest difference

Storytelling. It is the skill that makes every other skill matter. I learned early in my career, often as the only woman in rooms where decisions were being made, that expertise alone does not open doors. The leaders who shape industries are the ones who can translate what they know into a narrative that moves people to act. I invested in that deliberately, through my graduate work at Harvard and Rutgers, through building a podcast that now reaches more than 50 countries, and through years of speaking on global stages from COP to CES to Reuters.

What Comes Next

Overall winners from the 2026 Women in Supply Chain Forum™ Awards will participate in a live, in-person roundtable discussion at this year’s Women in Supply Chain Forum™. This recognition fuels the next chapter of work across the SCQ Fellowship, Women of the Revolution, the Supply Chain Revolution podcast, and the advisory and community platform that connects all of it.

Thank you to Food Logistics and Supply & Demand Chain Executive for the recognition, to Marina Mayer for the thoughtful conversation, and to every woman who has been part of this journey—as a fellow, a guest, a community member, or a leader who decided to show up and be visible when it was not easy.