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March 21, 2024–Women play an essential role in the supply chain industry, a point underlined by the 2024 Women in Supply Chain Leadership Roundtable, held by Cargomatic to honor Women’s History Month and International Women’s Day.

Moderated by Lori Ann LaRocco, CNBC Senior Editor of Guests and Global Supply Chain Reporter, the event featured Paula Bellamy, Managing Director and Shareholder, Oceanwide Logistics (OL); Laura Lucas, Chief People Officer for Cargomatic; and Barbara Melvin President and CEO of South Carolina Ports.

During the roundtable, these leading women expressed their views on current key issues facing the supply chain as well as their views on the role of women in the industry, with each of them detailing their paths to success.

Called on to speak about the current Red Sea crisis, Paula Bellamy stated that decisions by ocean carriers whether to traverse the waterway or not are leading to great uncertainty among shippers.

“We don’t expect there to be any let up of this war zone, probably not until the third quarter, perhaps even then it’s going to go on longer,” she said. That means shippers must become proactive when it comes to information gathering.

“It is really important now to speak to any of your freight forwarders that you have a really good relationship with, because they’re going to be speaking to the carriers every day to find out what’s going on,” said Bellamy.

Underlining what Paula was sharing, Barbara Melvin agreed that good communication is key to getting the flexibility needed to move goods along the supply chain when disruptions like the Red Sea crisis occur.

“The one thing in this industry that you can’t make up is time,” she said, “so when you’re expecting weekly services and you have a delay of 14 days in your transit time, you have a realization that your export cargo may be challenged,” said Melvin.”

“You communicate with your exporters that are moving through your port that ‘it’s okay, we know you couldn’t figure out what the receiving window for those exports onto the terminal would be’.”

“…So you’re correct, communication is key,” she said.

The art of communication is also essential for employees, according to Laura Lucas.

In the post-Covid world, she said Cargomatic, of course, offered more digital learning opportunities, but now is investing in “in-person intensive boot camps with all of our employees to make sure that they understand deep problem-solving and how the industry works.”

Training like this, she said, enables employees “to react real time on the line with our carriers and customers and provide that communication and confidence about what they are receiving by partnering with Cargomatic.”

Want additional insights? Check out the entire roundtable from these leading women based on their experience in the supply chain industry that powers the global economy: