“Made in America” as the Engine for High Performance Manufacturing Organizations and Satisfied Customers

  • Reviewing the market forces driving global footprint optimization decision-making
  • Asking the question, “What do my customers need, and how can I make that work?”
  • Identifying and comparing the total cost of ownership in national and international operations
  • Aligning manufacturing operations, supply chain strategies, and business-to-business communication practices to improve planning horizons, quality control, response times, versatility, and reliability
  • Discussing what the next ten years look like as companies find a balance between offshoring, onshoring, nearshoring, reshoring, and rightshoring

Laura Phillips
SVP, Global Sourcing & U.S. Manufacturing
Walmart

Laura Phillips is the Senior Vice President for Customer and Business Development, Walmart Global Sourcing.

In this role, Laura works supports commercial strategy, customer engagement and business development initiatives within Global Sourcing across multiple categories and customers. Walmart’s Global Sourcing team develops end to end sourcing solutions across food, general merchandise and apparel and operates Sourcing hub offices in more than ten markets.

Laura has served in various executive leadership positions throughout her career at Walmart including leading Corporate Sustainability, merchandising teams, and participating in several transformation initiatives. Within her role in Sustainability, Laura was responsible for leading the development, cross-sectional coordination and implementation of key sustainability initiatives that focus on emissions avoidance, waste reduction, product sourcing and related programmatic areas. Her team developed and launched Project Gigaton, Walmart’s ambitious goal to work together with suppliers to reduce 1 billion metric tons of emissions by 2030.

Before being selected to lead the Walmart sustainability team in 2015, she spent more than 20 years with the retailer in a variety of other executive leadership positions that included advancing Walmart’s omnichannel enterprise initiatives and serving as a buyer, Divisional Merchandise Manager, and General Merchandise Manager across categories ranging from wireless services, to toys, to packaged food.

Laura earned a Bachelor of Science in Finance from the University of Florida, as well as a Master of Business Administration from the University of Arkansas. She also is a graduate of the Global 2020 program at the Tuck Business School at Dartmouth College. She resides in Rogers, Arkansas with her husband, John, and their two children, Jack and Kate.