I’m currently a Hardware Commodity Manager for Amazon Go. Responsible for finding and developing new suppliers to support infrastructure and systems necessary for the new stores to operate.
Prior to joining Amazon, I was in Supplier Management in the aerospace industry at Boeing. I had the opportunity to work at Boeing as a Procurement Agent and Procurement Manager. During that time, I was able to work with suppliers in the US, Korea, Japan, UK, and Spain across multiple commodities including major aircraft structures, airplane systems (including avionics), and machined parts and subassemblies (minor aircraft structures).
Prior to Boeing, I’d worked a number of jobs including construction laborer, small engine repair, inside sales, and delivery driver. In 2005, I graduated from Western Washington University with a Bachelors Degree in Operations Management and, after a number of years, I decided to go back to school at the University of Washington and earn an Master of Business Administration in Technology which was a fantastic experience and built nicely on my undergraduate degree and work experience.
I’ve been able to work in a few areas within the Supply Chain arena. As an Operations Procurement Agent and Procurement Manager I’ve been responsible for teams managing daily production performance, ensuring on-time delivery and driving quality improvements while project managing development activities and ensuring that shortages are filled quickly and minimizing impacts to manufacturing. As a Contracts Procurement Agent I had the opportunity to manage supplier contracts, renegotiating contract language, adding large statements of work to an existing supplier’s build plans, and interpreting and driving supplier compliance to contract clauses. I’ve spent time acting as a factory interface to manufacturing, representing Supplier Management and the supply base to those who build airplanes. Finally, as a Commodity Manager, I’ve had the opportunity to focus on sourcing, industry intelligence integration, strategic supply chain development and purchasing.
For quite a while at Boeing I worked in a few roles in a supply chain operations center which received quite a bit of media attention. I was initially responsible for Tools and Processes development and worked to create and rollout both software applications and operating procedures and processes for a greenfield activity. Later I was invited back to lead that team as a first-line manager and worked to grow the scope and responsibility of the center. While I’ve moved on from that opportunity, I still enjoy thinking about the potential benefits provided by supply chain control towers and aggregated visibility of production health and risks. I believe that, especially in a large and complex distributed supply chain, information is a *huge* (and often latent) need that can only strengthen daily operations and reduce costs.
In my spare time, I enjoy working through entrepreneurial projects with friends. Working to develop and validate concepts, researching markets, competitor analysis, creating advertising and marketing materials, etc. Sooner or later, we’ll come up with something to execute upon that will augment (or replace) our day jobs (although leaving my day job would be a very difficult decision).