Heather Sheehan: A career built on reaching out and reaching beyond

Heather Sheehan’s career has taken her into almost every corner of the supply chain—from Fortune 500 corporations to industry associations to consulting and academia. But although she has traveled down many branches of the supply chain, some things have always remained constant: a desire to elevate the supply chain discipline as a whole and a desire to elevate others into stronger, more well-rounded leaders.

Given Sheehan’s steady focus on service to the industry, it makes sense that she is being honored with the 2024 Distinguished Service Award (DSA) from the Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals (CSCMP). Regarded as the most prestigious honor in the supply chain field, the DSA recognizes those supply chain leaders who exemplify significant, consistent, and career-long contributions to the development of the logistics and supply chain management disciplines.

Sheehan’s career has spanned more than 30 years, beginning at the railroad company Union Pacific Corp. From there, she moved on to various leadership positions in procurement, logistics, and marketing with Honeywell and NCR Corp. In 2002, Sheehan joined Danaher Corp., an American global conglomerate that designs, manufactures, and markets medical, industrial, and commercial products and services. There, she served as the vice president of indirect sourcing and logistics, acting as co-chief procurement officer with worldwide responsibility for nonproduction and logistics sourcing, strategy, and implementation across the corporation’s 40-plus operating companies. She was involved with operations in 125 countries and led successful changes in supply chain processes, policies, talent, quality, efficiency, and acquisitions as Danaher grew from $3 billion to over $20 billion in revenues in her 13 years with the company.

At the same time that she was leading these major supply chain initiatives within her own company, Sheehan was also holding significant volunteer leadership roles outside of it. For example, she served on the CSCMP Board of Directors for more than a decade and as chair from 2013 to 2014 and was actively involved in AWESOME, a leadership community dedicated to achieving women’s excellence in supply chain operations, management, and education.

When Sheehan took over as executive director and board advisor for the nonprofit AWESOME in 2018, it felt like a natural outgrowth of her previous efforts. As director, she helped grow membership to more than 1,500 executive level women and significantly increased the number of corporate sponsors.

Throughout all these endeavors Sheehan has been an active proponent of seeing the supply chain as more than just a transactional, operational function. Instead, she has pushed those around her to realize supply chain’s potential to drive innovation and top- and bottom-line growth. As part of those efforts, she called upon her fellow supply chain professionals to develop a strategic, business-focused mindset. Now many of the people she mentored have themselves risen to senior level positions. She is, as one nominator called her, a “people builder.”

These passions continue in her current work as a consultant and educator. As owner of Crispy Concepts LLC, she provides clients with supply chain and leadership consulting, and she is also an instructor with Penn State University and a board member and adjunct faculty member with University of Denver’s Transportation & Supply Chain Institute.

Sheehan is set to receive the Distinguished Service Award during the opening general session of the CSCMP EDGE Supply Chain Conference & Exhibition in Nashville, Tennessee. In the lead up to the conference, Sheehan took some time to answer questions from Supply Chain Xchange’s executive editor Susan Lacefield.

You have been involved in many different aspects of supply chain management over the years. Can you tell me a little about your career path?

My focus in grad school was on industrial marketing and the application of quantitative principles to decision-making, which led to me to joining Union Pacific Corp. in marketing and business development roles. I was fascinated by the railroad, its operations, and the generally unseen impact that freight transportation has on our macro economy as well as our day-to-day lives. It was the late 1980s so we didn’t call it “supply chain” yet.

Eventually, I moved to the manufacturing industry where I was immersed in end-to-end logistics, warehousing, demand and materials planning, and procurement. It all felt very transactional, reactionary, and nonstrategic. But then I joined Danaher Corp., which sort of flies under the radar but has a tremendous record of success. Danaher gave me the latitude and resources to build a supply chain function that was strategic, process-oriented, innovative, and recognized by the CEO. It was so rewarding to create and lead a team that added real value to our customers, our employees, our suppliers, and our shareholders.

You have been heavily involved in industry associations over the years—both CSCMP and AWESOME. Why do you feel it is important to get involved in such organizations?

As board chair for CSCMP and executive director of AWESOME, I wanted more people to know about and benefit from participating in the organizations. It’s so easy to become engrossed in our daily work that we can’t see new and different methods. Environments inside our companies can be insular and isolating. CSCMP and AWESOME give opportunities for learning about new innovations and different viewpoints because they both have a great cross-section of practitioners, academics, service providers, and consultants. I am regularly enlightened by my CSCMP and AWESOME colleagues about new approaches to leadership, technology, and process improvement.

Why have you been so passionate about AWESOME? What do you feel it provides to the supply chain management field in general, and more specifically to women working in supply chain management?

My first reaction when invited to AWESOME’s inaugural event in 2013 was that Ann Drake (CSCMP’s first female DSA winner) was trying to sell me something, and anyway, why would I need a network of women? I was doing pretty darn well in my career. By the next year, I got good recommendations from trusted people, so I participated in AWESOME’s symposium and was surprised by how good it felt to be with 100 other women who had also made it to senior-level leadership positions. It was so much fun and easy to build new friendships and alliances with these like-minded, accomplished women. Together, we created ways to find and elevate more great female talent into supply chain leadership through our networking, mentoring, and scholarships. Ann Drake and AWESOME’s first executive director, Nancy Nix (CSCMP’s DSA winner in 2017), are absolute visionaries.

You currently have your own consulting company Crispy Concepts. What types of consulting projects do you particularly relish?

I love helping senior leaders facilitate and guide their change management efforts and create value across their entire supply chain ecosystem. I see so many leaders make the mistake of believing they create value by pushing cost off to another partner in the supply chain, so I drive people to think carefully and critically about truly creating value. I also teach executives and master’s degree students at Penn State and the University of Denver, which is particularly rewarding. My focus is on sharing practical strategies for problem-solving, collaboration, talent assessment and retention, dealing with cultural and communication barriers, and helping students understand that the skills and expertise that are built early in their career are not what takes them to the next level into leadership. That next level requires bigger thinking and actions that drive breakthrough improvements for their broad set of stakeholders.

What is your proudest professional achievement?

I am proud of the supply chain that I built for Danaher, which involved many innovations that injected process, metrics, and discipline into procurement, logistics, talent management, and acquisition integration at Danaher. These innovations led to better decision-making, lower costs, higher service, better teams, and less disruption for employees, customers, suppliers and shareholders. I am proud of the unrelenting focus on continuous improvement and value creation. On a more personal level, I am so proud of being a positive example of ethical leadership and helping others to develop their careers. Several former employees and mentees have said, when facing a challenging situation, they think, “What would Heather do?” to help them figure out their next step. It’s a powerful compliment that makes me proud.

What advice do you have for someone starting their career in supply chain management?

It’s good to have personal career goals but allow yourself flexibility. As your life circumstances change, as the economy fluctuates, as technology evolves, as you learn more, you will find that new paths and opportunities arise. If you have a rigid idea of what your career should look like, you will fail to recognize some great avenues for personal development, interesting work, and possibly financial gain. The example from my career is that I hesitated when Danaher started recruiting me because they were one-quarter the size of the very large company I was working for—wouldn’t that be a step backwards? With some research and input from friends, I realized that Danaher had the potential for huge success, and I wanted to be part of it. It turned out to be the best and most rewarding career decision of my life … but I almost didn’t consider it because of some rigid thinking.

Do you have different advice for someone at the midpoint of their career?

In mid-career, it can feel like the workload is overwhelming, and it’s often at the same time that family obligations are at their peak. We tend to just put our heads down, focus on the task list, and try to make it through the day. My advice is to carve out time, at least weekly, to evaluate how you’re doing on the multidimensional aspects of a successful career. At AWESOME, we developed the “Reach Framework” as a guide for taking action in all of these dimensions:

• Reach Up to elevate the role of supply chain,
• Reach Out to build strategic connections,
• Reach In to strengthen your competence,
• Reach Back to help early-career people advance,
• Reach Across to engage allies as advocates of change.

If you are regularly “reaching” in all these directions, your career will soar!