Supply Chain Career Growth: How to Build Community, AI Literacy, and Confidence with Liz Raman, Supply Chain Gals Founder | Forbes 30 Under 30

Supply chain is no longer a hidden career path. It is where strategy, technology, operations, consumer behavior, product management, data analytics, and resilience converge—and the professionals entering this field today have more career optionality than any previous generation. Liz Raman built the community that makes that optionality visible, accessible, and actionable for women across every career stage.

The Community That Women in Supply Chain Always Needed

Liz Raman is the Founder and CEO of Supply Chain Gals, a Forbes 30 Under 30 honoree in Transportation and Mobility (2025), an MIT and Georgia Tech alum, and a senior product manager in tech. Her career arc tells its own story: transportation analyst at The Home Depot, one of the youngest supply chain directors at Nike by age 26, leadership of a multibillion-dollar third-party sales division at Amazon, and the founding of a 501(c)(3) nonprofit professional network that now connects over 20,000 women in supply chain across career stages.

Liz built Supply Chain Gals because the community she needed early in her career did not exist. Starting as a transportation analyst, she was motivated and excited but constantly hitting moments where she did not know what to do next, where to go for advice, or whether she was making the right decisions. Analysis paralysis, as she calls it, can stop you in your tracks and prevent forward movement. She wanted to create a space to support high achievers early in their careers, to keep them motivated and connected to resources that would help them navigate the complexity of supply chain career decisions.

I have participated in Supply Chain Gals events, including their case competition, and the caliber of engagement, rigor, and community energy is remarkable. This is not a social media following. This is career infrastructure.

Why Supply Chain Is the Ultimate Connector Career

Early in her career, Liz was given the advice that she needed to pick a specialty area and commit to it. She struggled with that advice because she was curious, loved learning new things, and got bored easily. Supply chain turned out to be the answer—not because it was narrow, but because it connects to every function in a business.

Her framing is useful for anyone advising early-career professionals or anyone exploring how to start a supply chain career: if you are part of a company that delivers a product or service, you are part of the supply chain. It may not have felt that way before 2020, but after COVID the visibility and importance of supply chain within every organization became impossible to ignore. For professionals who want to learn new things, try different areas of the business, and build diverse careers, supply chain is the connector through all fields.

This resonates with a thesis that has emerged across multiple Supply Chain Revolution episodes: every job is a sustainability job, every job is a technology job. Supply chain sits at the intersection of both. The professionals who understand that intersection are building careers with limitless potential, because they are developing the cross-functional fluency that organizations increasingly need but rarely find.

Community as Career Infrastructure: What Supply Chain Gals Offers

Supply Chain Gals is structured as practical career infrastructure, not a passive social following. The community hosts career workshops, mentorship circles, networking nights, and case competitions. The membership includes over 120 active members connected through Slack, sharing articles, asking for coffee chats, and keeping each other informed about what is happening across the profession.

Liz designed the community so that no matter where you are in your career—whether senior or just starting—there is something to learn and someone to learn from. The challenge for women in supply chain is amplified because they remain the minority in the field and face additional barriers in finding mentors and sponsors. Supply Chain Gals addresses that gap directly by creating structured access to the relationships, visibility, and exposure that drive career movement.

The case competition is the community's most popular event, and for good reason. Participants meet strangers, form teams, analyze a real-world supply chain challenge, and present an executive summary to senior leaders who face these decisions daily. The kind of exposure that early-career professionals almost never get—presenting to a vice president and receiving honest, constructive feedback—is built into the community experience. It simulates executive-level decision-making in a format that accelerates growth faster than any certification or online course.

Building AI Literacy and Technology Fluency Through Practice

AI and technology literacy are top learning priorities for Supply Chain Gals members, and the community is building fluency through hands-on, experiential workshops rather than passive content consumption. In May 2026, the community hosted an AI strategy, fraud, and cybersecurity discussion with an expert from Microsoft. In July, they are hosting a hands-on workshop with a data engineering and AI leader from Accenture, where members will walk through real scenarios and discuss as teams which AI tools they would use and how they would approach solutions.

Liz's philosophy on education reflects her own experience. She was a self-taught senior data analyst who did not pursue a certificate. She learned on the job. She has found that the most effective learning is experiential: put people in scenarios, let them practice, let them fail in a safe environment, and then take those skills back to their careers. That principle—learn by doing, not by watching—runs through everything Supply Chain Gals builds.

For supply chain professionals at any career stage, the message is clear: technology literacy is becoming the most important skill for the next five years. Not mastering a specific tool, but developing the fluency to understand what AI and emerging technologies can do, when to apply them, and how to lead teams through technological change. The professionals and organizations that build this fluency now will have compounding advantages over those that wait.

What Companies Still Get Wrong About Supply Chain Talent

When I asked Liz what companies still get wrong about attracting, developing, and retaining supply chain talent, her answer was not what I expected. She did not point to compensation or title inflation. She pointed to something more fundamental: companies underestimate that people are excited for the opportunity to learn.

Not more money. Not a bigger title. The opportunity to learn.

This aligns with everything I am seeing across the profession. The organizations that treat talent like an asset to invest in, rather than a resource to deploy, are winning the retention game. And the organizations that create environments where learning is part of the culture—not an annual training checkbox—are the ones people choose to stay at. Liz has lived this. She built her career by learning on the job, teaching herself data analytics without a formal credential, and founding a community built entirely around the principle that people who stay curious and keep learning build the strongest careers.

Lightning Round: Five Career Insights from a Forbes 30 Under 30 Supply Chain Leader

The biggest misconception about supply chain careers

That they are limiting. Supply chain connects to every function in a business. Professionals who enter this field gain exposure to strategy, technology, operations, analytics, product management, sustainability, and leadership—often within a single role. The misconception that supply chain is narrow is the biggest barrier to attracting the next generation of talent.

The one skill that will matter most in the next five years

Technology literacy. Not mastering one specific tool, but developing the fluency to understand emerging technologies, evaluate AI capabilities, and lead teams through digital transformation. The professionals who build this fluency now will be the ones leading supply chain organizations in the next decade.

What companies get wrong about supply chain talent

They underestimate that people are excited for the opportunity to learn. The strongest retention strategy is not compensation alone. It is creating an environment where continuous learning is the culture, not an annual obligation.

What professionals should stop overthinking

Stop waiting until you feel ready. Go before you are ready. Liz went from transportation analyst to Forbes 30 Under 30 by taking chances, learning on the job, and building Supply Chain Gals before she had a playbook for how to do it. The professionals who wait for the perfect moment miss the compounding value of starting early and learning in motion.

What excites her most about what Supply Chain Gals is building next

The membership community. The events, workshops, and case competitions create moments of connection, but the Slack-based membership keeps people connected in their day-to-day work—sharing resources, asking for advice, and building the kind of ongoing professional relationships that sustain careers over time.

Listen to the full conversation with Liz Raman on the Supply Chain Revolution podcast. Learn more and join the community at supplychaingals.com.