Some people fall into supply chain management by accident. Katie Vincent jumped into it.
As a student at Iowa State University in Ames, Katie Vincent thought she would pursue a career in marketing, perhaps advertising or brand management. But she felt something was missing. She considered switching majors to engineering but then took a required introductory course in supply chain. “The interconnectedness of marketing, manufacturing, logistics, transportation, etc., just fascinated me, and I decided that supply chain and logistics was a happy medium between marketing and engineering.” Today she is senior account manager for Owens & Minor in the Des Moines metropolitan area.
She grew up in New London, Iowa, a city of about 2,500 in the southeastern corner of the state. Her father, Paul Lorber, has owned an independent insurance agency for over 30 years. Her mother, Ana Lair, has been the Henry County Treasurer for 17 years and was president of the Iowa State Treasurers Association in 2013-2014.
“My mom started a new career later in life when she decided to run for county treasurer. She had worked in the treasurer’s office years before and then stayed home with me until I went to school. She then made the decision to run for county treasurer and has run unopposed for five election cycles. She really loves what she does.
“Growing up, I was used to Dad getting calls at home at night from his insureds if they had been in a car accident or had a house fire,” she continues. “Obviously, there wasn’t a lot he could do at that moment, but they felt better just being reassured that they were insured and things would be OK.” While she was in high school, she worked for her dad in the summers. “He would let me write memos and letters to customers and would edit them for me before we sent them. He taught me a lot about customer service and how to build customer relationships.”
A logistics career
After graduating from Iowa State, she took a number of exceedingly senior logistics roles. Her first stop was JCPenney, as a supervisor, managing merchandise flow from ports of entry to the company’s retail stores. As a recent college grad managing 50 to 100 people, almost all older than she, “I learned a lot about balancing holding people accountable and motivating them at the same time.”
Next she served as logistics manager for Pamida, a chain of department stores with approximately 200 locations in the rural Midwest and West Central U.S. “I had the best boss I’ve ever had there,” she says. “She was fantastic about pushing me and giving me feedback, while at the same time being incredibly supportive and teaching me.”
At Pamida, Vincent gained more valuable experience in logistics. She managed daily inbound transportation operations; oversaw inbound import freight; collaborated with transportation providers, freight forwarders, and third-party warehouses; conducted analyses to identify choke points and cost-savings opportunities in Pamida’s supply chain; and developed contingency plans to mitigate supply chain risk.
She took a tour of the port in Long Beach, California. “It’s hard to understand the scale of what happens there unless you’ve seen it.”
In 2012, she joined Werner Enterprises, the transportation and logistics firm, first as a project analyst, then export operations manager, and then as operations manager for logistics. In that last role, she worked with Werner’s 3PL customers on such things as order management, FTL (full truckload), project management, intermodal, expedited, air freight, ocean freight and LTL (less than truckload).
“I went from customer to service provider,” she says. “That was an interesting transition. I was more empathetic to both sides after this experience.”
In 2014, she joined Amazon in Indianapolis, Indiana, first as an area manager, then as operations manager. “Amazon is truly customer-obsessed,” she says. “It drives everything they do, and that still drives me in my current role. It always amazed me that as big as Amazon was, they were able to adapt and change extremely fast. To me, that was the coolest part about working there.”
After four years at Amazon, she was ready for a change. “I had been in supply chain operations for about nine years at that point. I wanted to use the skills I’d picked up over the years in an industry where I could make a difference. Healthcare seemed like a good place to start.”
She interviewed for a supply chain position in a healthcare system. She didn’t get the job, but she got a call several months later from Owens & Minor about a position there. “I thought Owens & Minor would be a great fit for me. It was distribution, it was customer service, it was sales, it was process improvement.” She joined the company in October 2018. “I can’t help this feeling that this is where I’m supposed to be,” she says today.
A new dimension
Healthcare has added a new dimension to her logistics experience. “These are not just widgets you’re moving, as in retail distribution. You’re working to improve efficiency, but never at the cost of patient outcomes. My friends and family live in the communities where my hospitals are,” she adds, “so I always try to keep that in mind. It really drives what I do.”
She brings insights from retail and commercial logistics with her. “New technology can have a huge impact on improving supply chain visibility, right-sizing inventories, and improving cash flow. These are things that would benefit a health system just as much as a retailer.”
At Owens & Minor, she considers her role to be more partnering than selling. She works with customers on
standardization, sourcing, product visibility and more. After spending time on the other side of the desk, she learned that successful salespeople focus on what the customer wants to talk about, not about what the salesperson is selling.
While in the retail industry, she participated in the Retail Industry Leaders Association’s Women in Supply Chain Network, an initiative to encourage executives to increase the number of women in the retail supply chain. “I think it’s so important to continue to encourage women to get into supply chain. Supply chain needs a wide variety of perspectives to continue to change and improve. I have met some powerhouse women in my career, and it’s crazy to think what would have happened if they hadn’t gotten into the field they did.”
Katie Vincent lives with her seven-year-old Vizsla, a dog named Rosie, in downtown Des Moines, a city she loves and describes as “a Midwestern hidden treasure.”