Welcome back to the she's supply chains podcast. This is Courtney and I'm Katie. Today we are excited to have Whitney Schlesinger joining us. Whitney is currently the vice president of global planning and logistics from McCormick with supply chain leadership roles across Unilever, New Balance and Tessa Mays. Whitney's career has spanned manufacturing, planning, logistics, customer service and sales. She has a BS in industrial engineering from Penn State and an MBA from Indiana University Kelly School of Business. Whitney is curious about the world and loves books and traveling. You will also get to hear how Whitney was heckled by a kindergartner. We're excited to have Whitney on the show with us today. Welcome, Whitney. Hello, Whitney. Welcome to she's supply chains. We are so excited to have you here. For our listeners, we are in the middle of hurricane season and Whitney has just lost power. It's come back on, but we've had to be agile and switch our recording audio. So you may hear some differences as we move along, but let's go ahead and jump right in. Welcome, Whitney. Can you share with our listeners a little bit about yourself and your background, both personally and professionally? Hey, it's so exciting to be here with both of you today. So to tell you a little bit about myself, both personally and professionally, I am from Annapolis, Maryland. I grew up there until I left and went to the Great University, Penn State, and stayed there, graduated with an industrial engineering degree. And then I started off working in a supply chain manufacturing rotational program, which took me around to many different states. I've had the opportunity to work in private companies and public companies and small family run companies, doing different roles throughout supply chains, sales, customer service. It's been really fun to just get the opportunities to experience different types of companies and in many different kinds of roles, both growing my career through the leadership leadership track. Also, you know, just getting the opportunity and being fortunate enough to be supported in all these different cross functional moves. How would you describe what you do to a stranger with no supply chain background at all? Yeah, so I love this question from the strangers on the street, because I'm really fortunate to work for a well-known consumer goods company. So when I talk about the brands that we make it work, they immediately can get excited and connected to that. But I explain that it's my job to make sure when they show up at the grocery store, at the store that they shop at, they find the products that they need on the shelf when they want them. And so, you know, we go through everything from the supply chain side of planning what needs to be made that the customers are going to want, making sure it gets made, making sure it gets to the distribution center, making sure it gets to the store, and then it's there waiting for them when they need it. I think that is like the most succinct way of explaining what supply chain is. And we were getting around earlier that that's kind of how my kids know of it too. And they know that I work in supply chain with the supply chain. And when something is not on shelves, specifically in one of our areas, they love to give us feedback. Like, can you tell Miss Courtney that Czech cereal was on the grocery shelf? I'm like, yeah, she'll get right on that. Well, yes, I also say I had the opportunity to present and career day for my kindergarten, my daughter's kindergarten. I really had to think about how do I explain this to a bunch of kindergartners? So I think that's really helped craft my answer. There you go. I also had a kindergarten pickle me a kindergarten pickle me because my opening slide was a beautiful picture of a summer crab fee seen with Old Bay right in prominent, because if you live in Maryland, like the matter of danger, you know, Old Bay. Just grabs an old day. And this little kid who was dressed like a chef for career day was sitting there and he looked at me and he goes, my family uses J.O. Spice. Oh, thank you. I said, listen, Oliver, your presentation is now. Whitney, was there a moment where you knew supply chain was for you? So I knew supply chain was for me when I was doing my internship with Johnson and Johnson. So my junior year, I had spent a semester working in New Jersey. And as part of our internship, I had decided I wanted to experience corporate life, our industrial engineering major was very heavily focused in manufacturing and root cause corrective action and understanding workflows and productivity. So I wanted to experience something different. But we had different interns from different schools in different departments. And as part of our internship program, we got to go to a production facility in New Brunswick, New Jersey, where they did gauze and band aids and a lot of the first aid equipment, which was cool because I was helping to supply plan for some of those portfolios. And I realized I was totally nerdy now when I was asking like 1000 different questions at different stops along the tour. My marketing counterparts were like, what are you just stop asking so many questions? You're making this tour takes so much longer than it needs to. But I was fascinated just watching the equipment, do all this automation and make the products that they were making. It was it was just it was overwhelmingly excited. So when I had the opportunity to be interviewing for full time roles, I thought it was really important for me to start my career manufacturing. So I actually did two my first two years in manufacturing. The first one was around continuous improvements, process engineering roles for Unilever. And I was in the Baltimore facility doing liquid laundry detergent and fabric softener. And then with Unilever, I moved to Clinton, Connecticut. And I was a third shift production supervisor for a year across their manufacturing departments and getting to learn about manufacturing leadership. So that that spark that moment in internship really started to build the momentum for what would become the foundation of my career. Whitney, from early in your career, you have worked across the entire supply chain. Manufacturing, planning, logistics, procurement, customer, you've even worked in sales. What have been some of your favorite or maybe least favorite roles? And how have you leveraged these experiences to create a truly optimized customer centric supply chain strategy? Yeah. So, you know, I think for me, I'm when I look at my, I love strength finders. So, you know, for people listening, if you haven't done strength finders, I think it's a really, a really amazing tool to use to understand, and why you get enjoyed some of the things that you do. So I would say in general, my curiosity has guided my career path, starting off in manufacturing. So when I did my co op and when I came out of college, I started off as a continuous improvement engineer in a manufacturing plant that looked liquid laundry detergent at Babbert softener. And so I started to get really embedded in that manufacturing culture and environment and said, well, kind of what I want to like to lead the teams that are making these products, not just coaching them on best practices and looking for efficiencies. And so my next role I went I did a production supervisor role night shift, which was a whole other set of challenges leading leading being the only manager in a facility through the night. And then I sat there and went, okay, I get handed the schedule that I'm making, but why does the schedule get made? Like, who's dictating what I'm making tonight? So then I kind of followed that curiosity into supply planning, and then innovation supply planning. And then at that point, I really wanted to go to an organization that I think was going to open more doors for me to move more cross functionally, the one I was in was a little bit more in supply chain, so choose something in supply chain. So when I moved to my second company, I had a little bit more support in moving around cross cross functionally. So started got my foot in the door relying on what I knew to go into supply chain. But then translated that to sales analytics, because you're sitting there and you're looking at the plan and you're like, why, you know, I'm seeing an aggregate plan, but what's really driving that plan? Well, the customers are driving the plan, the demand of the customers makes the plan that I'm trying to support. So I wanted to get closer to the customer. So I went to sales analytics, where I now work with the field to try to forecast and help them forecast what their shipments were going to be, help them prep for their sell ins and put all the deck together. So then my curiosity said, Oh, I wonder what it's like to sell. And so I had amazing readership for that up just amazing manager and an easy VP of the group that said, Hey, well, why don't you move down to Charlotte? Why don't you call in this account? And so I would say the sales role for me being an engineer was quite challenging. And it was probably I'm like, no, no, no, really, really logical plan. You should just like, it's based on numbers and data. And they were like, gonna do something else. No, that's not so I would say that was really challenging just because it was it just it's a completely different discipline. I think in your skill set, then what I what I really just felt that I got a lot of joy out over in the supply chain side. But what was great about that challenge and that opportunity is my leaders, the same leader said, Hey, we really need to go build out customer service. And so I got the chance to go back to Boston. And I led our I called a customer operations team across all of our highest volume accounts. So not the call center and not the regional stores, but the actual customer base that we had for for our company. And that was so fun. Like, I loved that role. One, because I now was leading the team that talked to sales and supply chain and they're two totally different languages. And so you like to be able to have the street cred with the sales team to say, I know what you're just the face, you're getting screamed at by these customers for things you cannot control. Like, I know what that feels like. So let me advocate for you the best that I can through the end end supply chain team so that we can be set up to meet the needs of your customer. And that was a really pivotal role for me that I just it just was so rewarding and fulfilling. But the other part of that opportunity that I would say I use to describe myself, I kind of need to go into a messy situation and I get joy of creating order out of chaos and to really build new ways of working. And so back to the string finders, my number one thing is an arranger. I am constantly looking for optimization and efficiencies Hello, industrial engineer kind of all makes us. But you know, this was one of those roles where it was a pivotal point of that company's time to really grow the capabilities of the customer operations organization. And I just had had that unique experience set where I could talk both languages and really help build our capabilities. So again, if you kind of think about like the just that curiosity of wanting to follow the path of the work that really dictated so many of my roles through customer operations, then I did global IBP integrative business processes, which now you start to talk about linking all the functions together. What are we doing? What's the execution plan? And, you know, so from there, it was more leadership positions kind of all the way up through. And now I'm in a role where I get to create value stream health, value stream execution, and all the things that go through it from the planning leadership role I'm in today. That is fantastic. Yeah, I was like, your energy usually gets so excited. You're like, I found the connection between sales and supply chain. I can make this happen. Because I think we sometimes all feel that tension sometimes. So how do you bring that to like your new teams, right? Because you're not always sitting in that chair. How do you bring that customer centric mindset? Because I do think it kind of helps unite everybody along like the entire company, right? Because at the end of the day, we're all trying to win with like our consumer or customers. So how do you bring that approach and like connecting that dot all the way across? Yeah, honestly, I think it's, yeah, I've been in my role about a year and a half now. And I think that it's something that we have an opportunity to do. And I think we through my partnership with the other leaders in our group are really trying to make sure that everybody along the end to end supply chain is linked in a really effective and holistic manner where one, they have the right data as an end to end team to understand what is the performance need to meet the needs of the customers and the commercial objectives. And then two are we meeting the needs of the financial needs of the company as well. So I think as you look at end to end, the plan source may deliver quality PD customer service and everybody else, it's a link to the execute the plan. How do we really clearly articulate the plan? How do we track success to the plan? And how do we have the right data in the right places through our IVP process, whether SNOE meeting or IVP that links how we're doing to but let's not just feel good about what these numbers say or these numbers actually resulting in as winning with a customer because that's what we're here to do. And so that's something that is a big priority for me as I look into 2025 to continue on that journey so that every person in every function of end to end supply chain remembers the why are we doing all of this? It's all to win with our customers and our consumers. So we all have a perfect, yeah, but it's a huge inspiration for as I look at the work plans for 2025. It's awesome insights. Okay, as we think about evolution of planning and supply chain and there's a lot of, there's a lot of change happening, you think about the landscape in the last couple of years, how have you changed your strategies around demand and supply planning with, and I think disruptions are probably moderated a little bit while we still have them. And so can you just talk about that a little bit and then how are you developing your teams to adapt and kind of how planning is evolving? Yeah, so you know, I think the first thing that I'm really focused on in the last year and a half coming in and taking over leadership of global such a supply chain planning. And I think to remember, as you guys had sleuthed on my LinkedIn page, I didn't grow up in the supply chain here at my organization. So I was coming from different roles that were partner roles to supply chain. So kind of coming in, I will never claim to be an expert on supply planning or demand planning. I have spent a lot of time diversifying my portfolio set. So it is really, really, really critical that I hire the right people that truly are the experts of their field so that they can, I can help support them from the leadership position to be incredible at their job and incredible leaders for their people that need to play that part for the company. So I would say my strategy is to be finding the best people that can build that map and then lead their team through it. But one of the places that I'm spending a lot of my time trying to build my expertise around, which will take a long time, is the digitization and automation space. So I know I've spent and run into probably every leader in your organization that some of these meetings and trying to learn more about, well, okay, what's the right technology that we need to be able to do work? You'll hear this again, more effectively, efficiently, and proactively. Because, you know, I think it's, it's a struggle for organizations who have a lot of investments that they need to make in these digitization automation and IT capabilities. Every function has opportunities. So every function is looking for important capital dollars to be able to take their team to the next level, utilizing all of these all these capabilities that are being developed. So I'm really trying to work with a select group of people in my organization to prioritize what is that what's the roadmap? What's the future look like? But what can we really, really fight for right now that we need that's going to take our capability to the next step? So we're looking at things like planning, so end to end planning solutions or AI capabilities. Yeah, so that I mean, that's something I'm spending a ton of time trying to say what's what's our smart investment plan? It's a good reminder, because I do think back to the initial question, sometimes as women, we feel like we have to be the expert or have all have that knowledge to be credible. And I think it's smart for you to remind us, you know, there's certain level competency we need, but we also need to surround ourselves with great people and teams. And we can't take all that load. So I think that's like just a good reminder and just in how we look at the people we surround ourselves with and building the right teams to be successful for sure. Absolutely. But you know, I think that the benefit for me was because I didn't grow up in this function. I kind of came, I mean, I grew up in spent, I spent my early career doing these jobs, but I didn't grow up in this function in this company. So when I came in kind of over migrated back to supply chain proper, it was like, I had no other choice. I was either going to die trying to be the expert in everything or really embrace having trust and faith in my leaders that were reporting to me. And figuring out my job is really, let's make sure we're clear on the priorities, we have a strong master plan, and then that body of work in those master plans are linked into what our needs are and our functional partners. So I really got to spend time not feeling guilty because I was like, there's just no way I can learn this much this fast. So I had to be really purposeful on where was I going to spend my time to learn versus where I had really great expertise already doing some of the core capabilities that we needed. Yeah, it's great because it's like a build and expand mindset, right, and really truly like leveraging the things around you instead of feeling like you have to take this all on do yourself. Now I also put a lot of internal pressure on myself that I don't learn as fast as I would like to because some of this stuff is so complex, and there's so much to learn. So I find ways to beat myself up and other ways to be expert in demand planning, like, you know, you got to build that muscle over time. So yeah, and you kind of touched on this because I think we are all trying to learn about what is the future hold? What are the emerging trends out there? I think sometimes it's digitization is technology. Sometimes it's like demographics are actually changing and the workforce is looking different. I don't even know what's going to come next on the news. I feel like there is so much happening around the world. Did you guys have a bridge? I got hit by a second to worship the miles of the distribution center. Right. I mean, you and you know, I'm sure not like the hurricane that cut the power off just, you know, 10 minutes into this call. There's just so many things that keep happening. How do you keep a pulse on like emerging trends and trying to to filter out? You know, this is a challenge of today and we have to address it and still make that time for thinking about the future. So it's kind of too personal. Like, how do you keep a pulse on what you think are emerging trends like some signals to be looking out for? And then how do you balance that time? Because we do have the issues that happen here and now. And we have to make the time for thinking about the future. I think as you guys know that the crisis of the day, which is right in front of you kind of takes a lot of focus. You know, I think that I think again, I think I rely on my functional experts to be making sure that they're outside and bringing in perspective and news from their professional organizations that they support. I have seen a lot of benefit personally, you know, we use Gartner as a consulting, a consulting partner and coaching partner. So I'm definitely leveraging a lot of their publications to understand what's going on. I am part of the World Trade Center Institute here in Baltimore. I've had the privilege of going through their leadership development program and I'm on their CEO Council. And so they publish a lot of information around their global organization connected globally to the other World Trade Centers. And their whole remit is helping global companies do global business. So they provide publications as well. But I think for me, it's around building the capabilities organizationally through our IVP process and through technical capabilities to really embed what if scenario planning and then business continuity plans. So, you know, I'd love to get we're building a lot of these muscles right now, but I'd love to get to the point where we're using our IVP process to say, hey, based on the demand that we see, we're able to support the demand plan. And, you know, we'll be responsive through SNOE to be able to catch really early anything that could put us off pace. And then we have the right places to talk about the right actions, mitigate whatever crisis is in front of our face. But I'd love to say our 12 to 24 month plan is really robust, really laid out. And then we can start to say, well, what would we do if, what if this were to what if we had another, I mean, we already can't like get suffering red sea, we're already got all this container congestion going on globally, we're a massive global company, we're moving product finished products and ingredients around the world. So obviously, all of those routes, we're all watching that, we're all watching what's going to happen with this port, the port negotiations that are happening on the East Coast right now. So I think it's about, you know, when do we start to get a better cadence of what these disruptions could be? And how do we use our IVP process and our technology to do scenario planning on how we would mitigate? And what play would we run? So that's, again, it's all about the stuff and really passionate focusing on right now is moving out of reactive, eliminate the surprises, move it to proactive. And I would say I think I'm a natural tendency to go worst case scenario planning. So it's like, okay, if I plan to do this, like, how could this go wrong? Like, what are the 10 different ways this thing could not execute the way that I think I'm going to have this? And then I try to run through at least mentally, what would I do if? And so as a leader, it's again, that journey. How do you start to get people to stop? Like, what how do we eliminate those reactive in the moment surprises make them more predictable? And then how do we shift as an organization to spend more time thinking about this? What if, and what would we do about it? Hey, Whitney, can you talk about any obstacles or challenges that you faced? My short answer, if you want to edit it in or not, I mean, I think for the breaking, I think the one thing, having spent time outside of supply chain and then coming back, especially just coming back the last year and a half. So again, being in our enterprise upgrade program, and then in running America's, our America's cost savings portfolio, the supply chain resiliency is no joke, like it is not paying for the heart, the mental exhaustion, and the physical exhaustion, when I jumped back into supply chain proper, I was like, oh, yeah, I got to run a supply chain again. And it was, I really felt like I was training for America on where the, this is hell. And I like can barely stay away until you really build that resiliency. So, you know, for me, I would say that as a function, you just you got to be agile, agile, like your agility training, you're jumping that you know, jumping over your cones, ready for what the heck is going to jump out and surprise you. But it's, you're training for a marathon too. And I think that that was a perfect reminder coming back into it. Yeah. But okay, Whitney, quick, fun, lightning, I think I don't know maybe it would be different. If you could be in any other function, what would it be? I know this one was really hard. I said, I said sales operations sales is like supply chain spirit animal or whatever that function. I do think like we get yelled at, they get yelled at, I appreciate that on people. Yeah. Yeah. I think again, that joy of that pivot point of being like connected, being able to translate between the two functions, I'd still try to flage my way into something. Yeah. Okay, what's your favorite book? Okay, so I read a lot. I've started reading more in the last two years. And I have to say probably wouldn't be appropriate to say my favorite book of the last year and a half. Because I have embraced with that supply chain resilience. You need really light fluffy things. So one of the books I read in the past that I loved with boys in the boat. So I don't know if you've got a movie. I saw the movie. I saw the movie. The book was 1000 times better than the movie. I have to tell you. So I highly encourage you going back and and reading the book because you know, I had to write down it was the 1936 Olympic team at a University of Washington during the Depression era. And it was a story about a man that came from absolutely nothing. And went to the Olympics to win the gold medal in the eight man row. And it was just such an inspirational story. And I think it's just, you know, there's people that have had a heck of a lot harder life than I have that have done really amazing and great things. And I love the perspective of like, shut up sister and just keep on going because like, all right, and then what is some of the best or maybe worst career advice that you've been given that's really stuck with you over the years. Yeah, I think some of the best advice that I just read or read into our new rotational participatory rotational program participants was, you know, don't don't lose who you are in your job. We just got introduced to four of our rotational analysts. And they talked about their hobbies outside of work. And my advice was don't don't lose sight of that love. Like, you've got to have the balance. You have to have passions outside of what you do day to day. And I mentioned, I mentioned about working nights in a manufacturing facility for a year. And I mean, it was one of the most rewarding years of my life. But it was really hard for personally, my life at 24 years old. And I gave up a lot of the things that I loved for doing working nights plus extra projects and all this stuff for my rotational program. And it took me a year or two to rebuild after that and to kind of regain myself. So, you know, I think making sure you can somehow establish in your early career that balance and those boundaries be great at both. That was helpful advice that I got. And I had to learn a hard way. So I would pass that on. I honestly can't think of any bad advice I got because I feel like at the moment I got it, I probably just like, like, thank you for it out moving on. Yeah, so I mean, I've had some pretty bad managers do some pretty bad stuff. I remember all of that. But I learned there are some big away from that. Yes. Yeah. But I probably just stuck listening to their dice at that point. Whitney, thank you so much. And we've had so much technical difficulty and. No, I appreciate it. It's such a pleasure. It's such a pleasure. I love I get to see both of you somewhere physically. Yeah. At the same time. Yes. Hell, Josh, you need to come to Minneapolis. Plus he's here. Well, you know, yeah, work on it. Okay. Well, I hope I see him talk to you guys soon. Thank you. Thank you. Have a good weekend. Bye. Bye. Thanks for joining us on she supply chains. We had such a good chat with Whitney. And I loved hearing the joy from her when she talked about creating order out of chaos. A big thanks to our team and our amazing listeners. If you enjoyed this episode, please rate, review and share. Stay tuned for our next one with Samita Penitar. Her career has spanned manufacturing, engineering, and continuous improvement. See you soon. Supply chain squad. Mhm. Mhm. Mhm. Mhm. Yeah. Mhm. Mhm. Yeah. Mhm. Yeah. Mhm. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) You [BLANK_AUDIO]
