Freya Hurwitz, Director of Procurement at TripAdvisor, manages procurement for TripAdvisor's 3,500 employees across four global brands with just one and half people on her team. Rather than trying to control every transaction, she built scalable systems that empower stakeholders to handle their own procurement while her team focuses on high-impact negotiations. 

Freya discusses how her cross-functional background helps her understand commercial models, build stakeholder relationships, and skip steps that traditional procurement professionals struggle with. She also addresses a fundamental shift happening in software procurement as vendors move to non-negotiable pricing models and pricing transparency increases across the industry. Her response isn't defensive but strategic: repositioning procurement's value upstream to focus on implementation complexity, tech stack integration, and operational readiness rather than just discount negotiations.

Topics discussed:

Cost avoidance delivers the same strategic value as cost savings, but CFOs often miss this reality when evaluating procurement performance. At JLL, Sr. Director, Group Sourcing Lead Brent Kellett has cracked the code on demonstrating total cost of ownership value through cross-functional partnerships that quantify operational efficiencies, energy savings, and service reliability improvements that don't show up in traditional savings calculations.

Brent's approach transforms procurement from order-taking to strategic advisory by focusing early stakeholder involvement and building trusted partnerships with internal teams. His systematic integration methodology turns potential resistance into collaboration when outsourced procurement integrates with existing functions, starting with empathy to understand career drivers and making internal stakeholders look good rather than replaced. JLL's initiative trains procurement professionals to deliver compelling five-minute client pitches, reflecting the C-level presentation skills needed to secure strategic involvement rather than last-stage procurement calls.

Topics discussed:

Mark Vierling, Procurement & Supply Chain Leader, makes a simple observation: while fractional COOs, CEOs, and CFOs are common, virtually no one was providing fractional Chief Procurement Officer services to companies that desperately needed them. His embedded approach, which he shares with John, differs from traditional consulting by making fractional leaders part of the client team rather than external advisors.

Drawing from automotive supply chain excellence learned at General Motors and applied across industries from manufacturing to government, Mark emphasizes why procurement must evolve from reactive cost management to proactive strategic capability. His experience implementing transformations demonstrates how the science of supply chain scales across entirely different business models and regulatory environments.

Topics discussed:

How do you centralize procurement across a $1+ billion health system while maintaining 24/7 operations that literally keep people alive? Dawn Watkins, Director of Strategic Sourcing at UF Health, gives John her blueprint for transforming independent hospitals into an integrated clinical enterprise. Her team of 25 is expanding to 50+ as they merge previously independent facilities across 12 hospitals, nearly 3,000 patient beds, and hundreds of physician practices from Gainesville to Jacksonville. This isn't just organizational restructuring — it's a shift from decentralized decision-making to enterprise-wide standardization that's already delivering concrete results.

Dawn's journey from forklift operator at Honda to directing strategic sourcing for over a billion dollars in non-labor spend reveals how manufacturing discipline translates to healthcare procurement. She brings Honda's core principle of "removing waste before adding complexity" and her MBA professor's warning to "don't pave the cow path" — meaning never automate broken processes without first questioning what truly adds value. Her practical approach includes everything from streamlining supplier invoice corrections (reducing two actions to one) to building mutual incentive partnerships where both UF Health and suppliers benefit from shared success metrics, all while navigating the unique constraints of a regulated industry where you can't simply pass costs to patients. 

Topics discussed:

When Aramark acquired Avenger International—the GPO consortium built by Marriott, Hilton, and other major hotel chains—they weren't just buying a customer list. They were executing a 15-year strategic plan to close competitive gaps while creating unprecedented scale for premium hospitality products. Autumn Bayles, SVP Global Supply Chain & GPOs at Aramark, reveals how this acquisition transformed their ability to serve luxury hotels and stadiums alike with everything from grass-fed beef to regional stadium favorites.

From her strategic role orchestrating multiple GPO acquisitions to building advanced analytics dashboards that answer questions like "how many sustainable products do we buy," Autumn shares the playbook for scaling procurement operations while maintaining the hospitality-first culture that drives guest experience from luxury hotels to stadium concessions.

Topics discussed:

AI implementation methodology for automated product matching across distributor systems with different naming conventions and data structures

A three-year technology consolidation process and backend system harmonization challenges

Five-tier product stratification architecture enabling simultaneous ultra-premium and economy sourcing within single-supplier relationships

Global business continuity protocol design requiring geographic supplier diversification beyond traditional backup supplier models

A dual-accountability leadership structure for managing internal procurement operations while retaining external GPO clients

Local-regional supplier network integration strategy balancing national contract leverage with location-specific guest experience requirements

Enterprise data processing infrastructure: daily management of millions of transaction rows with AI-enhanced analytical output

Cross-GPO spend consolidation identification using harmonized data to reveal supplier relationship optimization opportunities

Hospitality vertical complexity: simultaneous procurement for luxury hotels, sports venues, healthcare facilities, and corporate dining environments

Strategic GPO portfolio expansion rationale and competitive market positioning through vertical acquisition integration  

Arvind Nathan, SVP of Private Brands & Sourcing at The Michaels Companies, Inc., didn't plan to revolutionize how global teams think about private brand sourcing, but his mathematical approach to procurement has transformed operations in both his current role and his previous one at Walmart. Managing 220 people across Asia and the US taught him that successful sourcing isn't about having better tools than competitors — it's about building the right equation from available variables.

Arvind's framework treats every sourcing decision as part of a balanced equation where over-indexing any single variable can destroy the entire strategy, whether that's cost, quality, speed, or innovation. At Michaels, he oversees 14-15 private brands that must reflect the retailer's identity while competing against national brands with established equity. His team operates on three core principles that have proven essential as the distance between supply and demand continues to shrink in global commerce.

Topics discussed:

David Pennino, CEO & Founder, built LogicSource by recognizing that indirect procurement represents the largest untapped opportunity for most enterprises. His conversation with John highlights how a company processing $150 billion in spend data approaches categories that consume 20% of revenue but receive minimal professional attention. David's methodology challenges traditional consulting models through comprehensive free assessments and frequency-based expertise that most organizations cannot develop internally.

David discusses his unique assessment-first approach, explaining how this model achieves a 93% win rate by proving value rather than promising it. His team's frequency advantage demonstrates how specialized expertise scales across complex procurement categories. The conversation also explores LogicSource's expansion into healthcare, where "wedding pricing" creates unique opportunities for systems that cannot pass cost increases to patients. 

Topics discussed:

Sean Park, VP of Procurement and Transformation at Arm, didn't set out to revolutionize procurement at Arm, but when you're scaling a $4 billion semiconductor company at 20% year-over-year growth without adding procurement headcount, revolution becomes necessity. Sean offers John a peek at how Arm achieved nearly 20% savings on an 8-figure server deal using AI agents that required zero human intervention once launched, completing negotiations in days rather than weeks.

He also shares his SPORT framework — Strategy, Processing & Policy, Organization, Reporting, Technology — that represents a complete reimagining of procurement priorities, while his prediction that 20-40% of procurement knowledge becomes obsolete annually reflects the accelerating pace of change facing the profession. Sean's vision for procurement as a consumer-grade experience, combined with his philosophy of supplier relationships rooted in mutual respect rather than adversarial negotiations, offers a blueprint for procurement leaders navigating AI transformations of their own. 

Topics discussed: 

Managing 8+ billion products annually across 180+ countries while reducing logistics footprint by 27% requires more than traditional supply chain thinking. Steeve Yammine, Global SVP of Supply Chain at BIC, has orchestrated this complex operation by fundamentally reimagining how global companies approach contingency planning, regionalization, and talent development. 

He tells John his journey from brewery night shifts in Belgium to steering one of the world's most recognizable consumer goods supply chains offers practical frameworks for building resilient, efficient operations. Steeve also touches on how BIC transformed from inventory-heavy contingency planning to dynamic scenario mapping, implemented meaningful sustainability initiatives beyond product redesign, and developed a hiring philosophy that prioritizes critical thinking over technical knowledge in an AI-driven landscape.

Topics discussed:

"I'm a fireman," is how Yelena Mogelefsky, SVP of Production and Sourcing at Komar describes her role to her children — a perfect metaphor for the daily crisis management that defines sourcing leadership in fashion. In this captivating episode of Smarter Sourcing, Yelena walks John through how she transformed an entrepreneurial opportunity into a $150+ million division over 14 years. 

From navigating the complexities of intimate apparel to managing a global team across Sri Lanka, Hong Kong, and the U.S., Yelena reveals how fashion industry sourcing has evolved beyond cost-cutting to become a sophisticated discipline balancing sustainability, transparency, supply chain resilience, and value creation in an increasingly unpredictable geopolitical landscape.

Topics discussed: