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Craig Sutton, Vice President of Industry 4.0 at Eaton Corporation, shares how to build supply chains that thrive in uncertainty by combining AI, agility, and data. He explores how to turn AI into a true decision-making engine, eliminate data blind spots, and design flexible, insight-driven networks that anticipate demand and deliver lasting customer value.
Continue readingJoanna Kostecka, VP of Global Cloud Supply Chain Planning at Microsoft, shares how Microsoft is transforming its global cloud supply chain with AI at scale. She reveals how AI acts as a true co-pilot in planning and decision-making—accelerating speed, accuracy, and agility—while offering a practical playbook for building AI-ready teams and driving innovation across the enterprise.
Continue readingModerator Cristina Ricaurte, Regional VP and Head of SA SCM, Americas at SAP, leads a panel of global supply chain leaders—including executives from Alcon, Corning, Elidabeauty, Intel, and Ocean Spray Cranberries—on how organizations are navigating inflation and tariff challenges. Together, they share lessons from past downcycles, strategies for rebalancing supplier relationships, and practical ways to reduce costs and drive efficiency in today’s volatile market.
Continue readingModerator Keith Baranowski, Global Head of Sales for the SAP Business Network at SAP, leads a discussion with senior supply chain executives from 3M, Ford, Kaiser Permanente, Mattel, and The Hershey Company on how to reduce costs without sacrificing resilience or service. The panel explores strategies like supplier consolidation, AI-driven optimization, and sustainable sourcing to achieve long-term, strategic cost savings while maintaining agility and customer satisfaction.
Continue readingTVN Reddy, CEO of Aptean, and Allan Dow, General Manager of Aptean Supply Chain at Logility, share how AI is redefining the broken software landscape. In this candid conversation, they explore why traditional systems have failed, how the vision of borderless software is finally within reach, and how AI can transform the way organizations work and connect.
Continue readingModerator Cristina Ricaurte, Regional VP and Head of SA SCM, Americas at SAP, leads a panel of senior women leaders from General Mills, ONE/SIZE Beauty, Schneider Electric, and Sundays on building purpose-driven leadership in supply chain organizations. Together, they discuss how effective leaders drive positive cultural change, mentor future talent, and implement strategies that strengthen teams and deliver lasting impact.
Continue readingKeith Baranowski, Global Head of Sales for the SAP Business Network at SAP; Tushar Bhalla, CTO at CloudPaths; and Shree Nair, General Manager at Microsoft, discuss how supply chain orchestration creates the connected foundation modern organizations need to thrive. They share real-world insights on uniting siloed systems, the benefits of a well orchestrated supply chain, and practical steps for building resilience and long-term success.
Continue readingModerator Katie Holman, Vice President of Supply Chain for Meals & Baking at General Mills, leads a panel of senior General Mills leaders—including Chief Supply Chain Officer Paul Gallagher and executives from sourcing, planning, and HR—on the company’s “All In” strategy. Together, they share how deliberate talent development, leadership alignment, and a unified vision are transforming the supply chain, highlighting key challenges, wins, and lessons from their ongoing journey.
Continue readingFred Laluyaux, Co-Founder, President, and CEO of Aera Technology, and Douglas Guilherme, Global Supply Chain Vice President at The Hershey Company, share how Hershey is rapidly transforming its global supply chain through decision intelligence. They explore how activating intelligent capabilities across key decision points is creating a connected, agile, and resilient network that’s moving the company toward an autonomous, end-to-end supply chain.
Continue readingMichael Castagnetto, President of North American Surface Transportation at C.H. Robinson, and James Lamont, Director of Supply Chain at StarKist Co., share how leading companies are turning disruption into differentiation. They reveal strategies for building agile, data-driven supply chains that align with shifting global dynamics, deliver real-time visibility, and convert complexity into lasting competitive advantage.
Continue readingMatthew Barry, Senior Director of Solutions Consulting at e2open, shares how to move beyond the AI hype and make artificial intelligence truly work in the supply chain. He explores how data quality, cultural readiness, and intentional planning enable organizations to unlock real value and drive smarter, autonomous decision-making across operations.
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Allyson Nicholson is a seasoned biopharmaceutical executive with 29 years of experience in end-to-end supply chain management, business reengineering, and digitalization, across a wide range of industries including banking, airline, food, public sector, consulting, and pharmaceutical. Allyson has a proven track record in process improvement, large systems implementations, and mergers and acquisitions. With extensive experience in clinical and commercial supply chains, Allyson has successfully led product commercialization and in-market execution, ensuring supply reliability.
Currently, Allyson serves as the Head of Global Supply Chain at BioMarin Pharmaceutical, where she is responsible for the successful execution and services of all global supply functions ensuring supply to patients for their commercial portfolio and pipeline candidates.
Outside of work she enjoys cooking, learning about wine, skiing and walking in a beach somewhere. She currently lives in Boston with her husband, two young-adult children, and their two dogs.
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Catalina Vargas is Senior Vice President and Global Supply Chain (GSC) Lead at Bristol Myers Squibb (BMS). A global pharmaceutical executive with more than 20 years of experience, Catalina currently leads a talented team, working to seamlessly deliver medicines to patients in more than 50 countries around the world. Under her leadership, Catalina has built a highly synchronized, transparent and sustainable supply chain organization.
Catalina joined BMS in 2018 as Vice President, Strategic Sourcing and Procurement, Global Product Development and Supply, where she managed a complex supply chain to bring critical medicines to patients. During her time in this role, BMS acquired Celgene, which at the time was the largest deal in biopharma history, and Catalina successfully integrated the Celgene and BMS sourcing and procurement groups.
Immediately prior to her current role leading GSC, Catalina was Chief of Staff to the CEO of BMS where she led strategic enterprise-wide initiatives and advanced the leadership team’s governance and decision-making model. With an exceptional record of building high performing and agile global teams, Catalina is a passionate advocate for inclusion.
Prior to joining BMS, Catalina was with Pfizer for 17 years, where she was tapped for leadership positions across strategic sourcing, operations, and external manufacturing.
Catalina has a bachelor’s degree in industrial engineering and a graduate degree in finance and capital markets.
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Manny Bansi is Vice President of Toyota Logistics Services (TLS). He is responsible for finished vehicle logistics for North American operations that includes managing Marshalling Yards and Ports Operations.
Manny started his career at NUMMI (Joint Venture Between Toyota & General Motors) back in 1992. He then went on to hold positions in various areas including Corporate Strategy, Production Planning, Human Resources, including two-year assignment at Toyota Motor Corporation in Japan.
Manny is also involved in many Business Partnering Groups (BPG) at Toyota Headquarters, such as Young Professionals, AAC, Spectrum, TODOS, TAASiA, and WIIT. He currently serves as Executive Advisor for TAAiSA BPG and believes in the growth of all of his team members through Toyota principles.
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At the 2025 edition of the North American Manufacturing Excellence Summit series we sat down with Johan Beukema of BCI Global to have a conversation about site selection and footprint optimization in a world where these decisions are always important, but recent events are bringing them into sharper focus than ever.
We have had the pleasure of speaking with the experts at BCI Global at many Executive Platforms’ events over the years. In this episode we talk about which questions are always important, and also what is new and changing in this space. What do senior executives need to know when they make decisions about where their businesses are going to operate? What does good advice look like, and how do you get a well-rounded, multi-faceted understanding of all the factors and variables you need to make an informed decision? For all this and more, give this episode a listen!
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James Gowen is Sr. Vice President, Global Sourcing and Supply Chain, and Chief Sustainability Officer for Verizon. Since taking on the complementary roles of Supply Chain and Sustainability in 2009, his team has enlisted more than 65,000 Verizon employees in 50 countries around the globe in helping to reduce the company’s environmental footprint while increasing the efficiency of a growing enterprise.
Gowen is deeply involved in the advancement of innovative and sustainable technologies and spearheaded the launch of Verizon’s first ever green bond in 2019. Since then, Gowen has been instrumental in Verizon issuing five additional $1 billion green bonds with the net proceeds allocated toward renewable energy investments to accelerate the transition to greener electrical grids across the U.S. As one of the leading corporate buyers of U.S. renewable energy, Verizon has over 3.6 gigawatts of anticipated renewable energy capacity under contact and 37.6 megawatts of on-site green energy generation in operation at our facilities. Gowen oversees other green initiatives including setting Verizon’s approved science based emissions reduction targets, committing to operational net zero emissions, expanding recycling and waste reduction, and management of end-of-life-cycle material recovery.
In his supply chain and sourcing role, Gowen leads all inventory planning, logistics operations and sourcing globally. Gowen is responsible for the planning of over $35B of inventory and $70B of sourcing spend across all Verizon’s lines of business. Additionally, Gowen has responsibility for procurement, warehousing, transportation, quality, returns and end-of-life monetization.
In 2015, Gowen spearheaded the start-up of Verizon Services Ireland Limited in Dublin, Ireland. He was responsible for transitioning $15B in annual spend for strategic sourcing of Verizon’s Network and IT operations. Over 85 industry professionals were hired and a state-of-the-art center of excellence was built under Gowen’s leadership in less than 7 months.
Having held several positions of increasing levels of responsibility at Verizon, Gowen was the lead architect of the company’s supply chain strategy and led the strategic shift from a fixed to a variable inventory business model. While in corporate sourcing, he led the implementation of Verizon’s eProcurement effort, and the standardization of Verizon’s supply chain systems.
Gowen earned his master’s degree in business administration from Long Island University and his bachelor’s degree from Manhattanville College. He is a member of Penn State University’s Smeal Sustainability Advisory Board. He is also the current Chairman of GeSI (Global eSustainability based out of Brussels), and a board member of the MIT Climate and Sustainability Consortium. Gowen is located at Verizon Center in Basking Ridge, New Jersey.
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Jen Huffstetler is the Chief Sustainability Officer and Senior Vice President of Sustainable Impact and Compliance at HP. In this role, Jen is responsible for developing and leading the company’s integrated Sustainable Impact strategy to deliver sustainable computing for a sustainable future. She also leads product compliance and global technical regulations. She is a keynote speaker and expert on Sustainable AI and deployment of AI to achieve sustainability goals.
Previously, Jen was the Chief Product Sustainability Officer and Vice President/General Manager of Future Platform Strategy at Intel. Jen brings a diversity of business, marketing, supply chain, manufacturing, product development and engineering experience from her 25+ years at Intel spanning chips to software to data center systems.
Jen holds a Bachelor of Chemical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and an MBA from Babson College, F.W. Olin Graduate School in Corporate Entrepreneurship. She is also a certified Executive Leadership Coach from the Hudson Institute, a Korn-Ferry Interpreter, and Birkman Certified. She enjoys spending time with her husband, two adult daughters, and Malinois/Greyhound mix, traveling, Pilates, reading, volleyball, sailing, running, and cycling.
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