One week ago, delegates, speakers, and supply management solutions providers descended upon the historic Harvard Club of Boston for Ardent Partners’ fourth-annual CPO Rising procurement executive summit. The Ardent team had arrived the day before to set up shop, greet sponsors and early arrivals, and steady ourselves for yet another whirlwind day-and-a-half procurement event here in Title Town. For some of us, like Ardent’s Founder and Chief Research Officer, Andrew Bartolini, and our VP of Research, Christopher J. Dwyer, the CPO Rising summit was another win in a long line of successful supply management symposiums produced in their career. This was my fourth go-round and I have to say, as with most things, practice makes better (there are no perfect events — something always goes off-script — you just roll with it).

Anyway, the Ardent team is once again reflecting on the event in a series of articles here on CPO Rising. Today’s article is the first installment — three primary takeaways from CPO Rising 2019. So if you missed the event and want to catch up, this is for you. But if you were there and want to quickly refresh, we’ve got your back, too.

Three Takeaways

One — The Face of Procurement is Changing. The crowd at CPO Rising 2019 was more diverse than in recent years, and that’s something for the procurement industry (and us) to both acknowledge and celebrate. Ardent welcomed a beautiful array of men and women from all walks of life — Baby Boomers, Gen-Xers, and Millennials; people from all over the country and all over the world; and professionals from other industries and verticals, whose roles are touched by procurement and supply chain. Speakers, panelists, and roundtable hosts brought their authentic selves to the event, and looked out at an audience that not only looked like them, but also represented them and their challenges and opportunities to make an impact in supply management today.

Two — The Paths to Procurement are Winding Still. Speaking of diverse backgrounds, I was thrilled to see two friends in the audience who typify the ways in which professionals find their way to procurement (names and employers are being withheld to protect the innocent).

• One, a college friend who has spent nearly two decades climbing the ranks in procurement. A social sciences major, she decided instead to pursue a career in business, earning her MBA and progressing from vendor management, to category management, to sourcing, to ultimately procurement. As a senior manager, she is one procurement pro who is continuing to rise.
• Another, a dear friend who I’ve known for nearly a quarter century, returned to Boston after working abroad for more than a decade. As a former country Chief Information Officer for a major insurance company, the breadth and depth of experience he brought to this conference — as a collaborator of procurement, as someone who has vetted and implemented procurement technologies — was so unique. Although he was not a procurement pro, per se, his exposure to and experience with enterprise procurement teams offered delegates an opportunity to share perspectives with one of procurement’s most important stakeholders.

Three — Procurement Runs in the Family. 2019 saw the second consecutive parent-sibling duo at the conference. Last year, we had Meghan Truchan, VP and head of procurement at Bain Capital, in attendance. She is a third-generation procurement leader and a rising star in her own right. This year, we had Mary Kachinsky, CPSM, CPM, and VP of Strategic Sourcing at Kaleido Biosciences, and daughter, Amanda Kachinsky, senior manager of global sourcing at blue bird bio, not only in attendance, but also delivering a keynote presentation and sitting on a panel discussion, respectively.

While we are our own persons — few of us are still “directed” or “told” to pursue this or that career — we are also the products of our environments. Many of us grew up watching our parents climb the proverbial corporate ladder and hearing them tell us what was so special about each rung. We look up to our parents, even as we see them occasionally struggle to reach that next rung. We admire them even more for the struggle. So then it is no surprise that some of us follow in our parents’ literal and figurative footsteps, up that procurement ladder, rising towards the coveted CPO title.

Final Thoughts

I’ve written in past reflective articles about how the event amounts to months of prep work, late nights, and early mornings, only to come and go in a whirlwind of keynotes, breakouts, panels, and roundtables. That was as true this year as in year’s past. But every event is unique. This year’s event was more diverse, more representative of procurement pros and stakeholders, and in a literal sense, more familiar than in past events. Indeed, it does keep getting better.

P.S. I want to personally invite you to a new webinar, the Voice of the CPO Rising 2019 Summit, on November 14th at 2 PM ET, where the Ardent team will highlight the key speaker presentations and discussions that took place during the event.

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