Right after I graduated from high school, a friend and I threw our clothes and record albums (remember them?) in my $200 Vega and headed across the country to California where my plan was to work for a year and then attend UC-Berkeley on my way to becoming a doctor. One of the jobs I got in California was waitressing. At the time, I thought I was only trying to pay the rent, while preparing for my “real” career. Looking back, it surprises me to realize that some of the most valuable skills contributing to my success came from those waitressing days: communication, interpersonal relations, soft-selling, and making the other person always feel like a winner.

I never did become a doctor – instead, as a Chemical Engineer, I went to work in  a vegetable oil refinery, where I was the first female in management and I had 55 blue collar men reporting to me (grudgingly, as I heard later). I was too young and naïve to know how likely I was to fail. Thank goodness, because what I did learn was that if you treat people with respect and really listen to them, you can build success together.

After 20 years with that company – a journey that included my taking a demotion so I could learn different parts of the business, all while starting a family and earning my MBA – I joined Sodexo. 

Thinking back, in the early part of my career, I would sometimes be, unintentionally, excluded from conversations about “guy” things. I used to keep up a rudimentary knowledge of the sports of the day so I could participate in the conversation.  I really have no time or interest to do that now, but I did take up golf – a game traditionally the provenance of male executives, but a game that I’ve grown to love.  This has helped me enjoy some of the benefits of informal interaction that women have often missed.

Sometimes being female can even work to my advantage. Because there are so few women in the supply chain world, a woman can be more visible which, in today’s environment, creates more opportunities. Another advantage? There are shorter lines for the restrooms at executive meetings!

As I moved from waitress to senior vice president of supply management for Sodexo, it may sound like my progress came via a series of erratic and random hops. But the truth is, I chose every job with my eyes wide open understanding the challenges, benefits and tradeoffs associated with each position I embraced. And most importantly, each job was chosen through a filter ensuring it meshed with my core values.

I would encourage all young women to spend time determining your values at the onset of your career.  Make conscious choices about your career ensuring they align with your core values.  And, whether you choose to be a waitress, a doctor or something entirely different, success will come if you remain true to yourself and your beliefs.

We’ve all heard that many of the things we throw out wind up in our landfills, where they’ll be for years and years, potentially polluting our planet. If you’re an environmentally conscious consumer, you do everything you can to ensure that whatever you use doesn’t end up in a landfill if there’s an alternative. At Sodexo, we’re not only concerned about the journey our products take after we’ve used them but we’re also working to ensure that the journey our products take to get to you in the first place also has a low environmental impact.

Our partner, Pactiv, has introduced their “Perfect Cube” initiative with just that in mind. Pactiv provides our foam containers, cutlery, dinnerware, foil and aluminum containers, among other products. Pactiv installed new product tooling, warehouse equipment and packaging to reconfigure the pallets they use to ship their products. Why does this matter? Well, the more efficiently you can stack containers, the more of them you can fit in a shipment. The more in each shipment, the fewer trips each truck has to take, saving fuel. This is no small adjustment – in fact, Pactiv predicts that the new “cubes” will save more than 2 million truck miles a year, meaning a reduction of more than 250,000 gallons of fuel each year.

And the positive environmental impact continues even after the truck unloads. It used to take workers 4.5 hours to empty a truck. With the new “cube,” that now takes an hour or less, reducing the amount of fuel needed to move the product within the warehouse. Again, no small savings. Over the course of a year, the efficiency means a 600,000 liter reduction in propane use (or its electric or diesel equivalent).

What this means for you is that when you discard your plate or cutlery, you can do so with the knowledge that the planet-friendly journey began even before you toss it into the recycling bin. 

It seems like issues with the safety of our food supply are getting to be more frequent these days, or at least they’re hitting the mainstream press more often. Back in the “old” days, such issues generally had to do with higher risk products or processes, and now they are striking in categories near and dear to my heart and my waistline --- nuts and cookies! 
At first blush, it might seem that the food supply chain is out of control. Part of the reason that there are more incidents to report may well be that there are more controls built in, and issues are more readily identified and reported. In our ideal world, we wish that there would be nothing to report because everything is safe and nutritious. Unfortunately, this is not yet the case, and we must design systems to protect customers, clients, and ourselves. 

We rely on our supply chain partners to do a lot of the lifting for us. As we look to qualify suppliers, we mandate that they have systems in place to protect our clients and consumers. (You’ll read more about this in the second part of this food safety series.) We also require them to pass third party food safety audits and to have adequate recall policies and procedures. These measures help us to manage risk both in lowering the potential to have a problem and to improve our ability to respond quickly should one occur. It is critical that once a food safety risk becomes known, we have the ability to isolate the products involved, to notify our unit managers and to remove the products from our operations. 

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As I reflect on the recent Vendor Partnership Meeting, held annually in conjunction with the Sodexo Foundation Dinner, I continue to appreciate the ever growing depth of the partnerships that we have built over the years. Our manufacturer and distributer partners provide Sodexo with quality products, top notch service and support that ranges from consumer trend information to innovative menu planning solutions which can be applied to the distinct customer groups we service. I am proud of their commitment to Sodexo’s Supplier Code of Conduct and other quality assurance practices currently in place such as verification of proactive food safety and food security programs and recall policies and procedure.

While our partners are appreciated in many ways throughout the year, our annual Vendor Partnership Meeting is a way for Sodexo to recognize our partners for the work they do on behalf of our organization and their commitment to Sodexo’s company wide initiatives to include Choices 2015, CaRMA, The Market Connection, Sustainability and Health & Wellness.  

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