Amanda Richterkraft on Building a Career in Logistics

It’s a new year, and there are reasons to suggest that 2024 might be a departure from the fresh chaos that has hallmarked supply chain since the 2020’s started, or at least a de-escalation. Over the last few years, supply chain professionals have navigated an endless array of challenges. When managing logistics and supply chains, they’ve responded to global pandemic factory closures, volatile and spiking inflation, and geopolitical tensions including wars that have limited critical supplies—think grain from the Ukraine. More approaches to streamline a smart, sustainable supply chain are coming into focus this year—all made more possible by the growing ranks of Women In Supply Chain™.

APQC (American Productivity & Quality Center) predicts that ESG and sustainability initiatives will be a driving factor across supply chain management, more organizations will move to digital supply chains, and inflation and labor shortages will continue creating SCM risks. At the end of the year, 616K skilled manufacturing jobs were still unfilled.

There was a lot of progress for Women In Supply Chain™ last year with a huge increase in executive representation resulting in more opportunities for other female professions. Even while frontline representation by women stagnated at 31%, the overall percentage of women in the supply chain community made a 5% increase. This trend is expected to continue as more female professionals return to the post-Covid workplace.

To keep delivering new solutions and evolving with changing market demands, organizations need to invest in more Women In Supply Chain™. At Let’s Talk Supply Chain, we’re proud to feature Women In Supply Chain™ breaking outdated gender roles across global logistics, transportation, and manufacturing. The numbers show that Women In Supply Chain™ drive faster, bigger leaps forward and more profitability. Women In Supply Chain™ empower global business performance for powerful outcomes and greater agility through collaboration.

Women In Supply Chain™ inspire us, and we hope they’ll encourage other female professionals looking to ascend far beyond glass ceilings. That’s why we highlight their stories and career journeys each month.

Let’s Talk Supply Chain’s Women In Supply Chain™ program, and these features show that investing in your female workforce is a formidable competitive advantage. Advancing women in your ranks is proven to propel higher revenue and ROI. Over half of businesses dedicated to gender equity and diversity have 50% higher profitability and 61% higher revenue growth than competitors. More than 70% rank the highest in customer satisfaction.

This month, we’re excited to feature Amanda Richterkraft, a Logistics Sales Ops Team Lead at Trailer Bridge where she’s worked in a leadership capacity for almost five years. Amanda has a proven background in logistics coordination. She is an official Women In Supply Chain™ honoree.