Women in Procurement Wednesday: Dawn Andre on solving procurement puzzles and being a continuous learner

Dawn Andre is the Executive Vice President of Product Management at Jaggaer. (Personal photo)

虽然许多青少年的第一份工作涉及坐在泳池边或照看孩子，但一些幸运的人在15或16岁时就找到了他们的激情。Jaggaer的产品管理执行副总裁，Dawn Andre,fell in love with sourcing and logistics at her first job when she worked for her family’s retail company.

While her career took a few twists and turns along the way, Andre found excitement doing various procurement-related tasks. Andre finds fulfillment in all things procurement data, sourcing, solving problems for customers and bringing products to market.

如何为贵公司找到合适的采购技术和供应商？Spend Matters的新5步“采购技术买家指南”可以提供帮助，包括操作文档、检查表模板和其他提示。

这在很大程度上源于她童年对解决谜题的兴趣。但安德烈也表示，这是持续学习的一部分。当你得到一顶帽子、一件长袍和一张文凭时，教育并不会停止。

“我们如何确保供应链弹性?How do we ensure that we have continuity of service and how does all this happen when we're working remotely now?” Andre asked. “So these are the challenges that really get me excited about this particular market space. And I don't think we're done yet. We have lots of problems that we can solve.”

安德烈称她到贾格尔的旅程是一个“网络化的网络”，在那里，她多产的职业经历了曲折，但在某种程度上一直植根于采购和采购。安德烈从宾夕法尼亚州立大学（Penn State）获得供应链和信息系统学位后，在宝洁（Procter and Gamble）从事订购和分销工作。

When the technology boom took off, Andre wanted to get into that market to be a part of the teams that enable business processes with technology. She joined a company called Manugistics where she specialized in vendor management and forecasting.

在Jaggaer目前的职位上，她通过采购解决方案帮助解决客户的业务问题。凭借在全球企业的各种经验，她已经见识了一切，并学会了在不同的采购趋势出现时，对新的机会说“是”。

安德烈承认，在这个行业做一名女性并不总是那么容易。有时，她是房间里唯一的女人。其他时候，男性低估了她在会议中的作用。

Andre is hopeful for what the future holds for women in the industry. Women are increasingly taking executive positions, and Andre believes women are feeling much more empowered every day.

Although Andre has been in procurement for nearly her whole career, she said that every day is something different. This is one of the many things she loves about it.

新冠疫情挑战并改变了她的客户在采购组织中的需求。对许多人来说，风险管理现在是一项关键指标。安德烈说，随着更多供应商的到来，这项技术可能会朝着这个方向发展。

安德烈说，从专业角度来看，大流行为她打开了新的机会。在疫情导致美国许多地方关闭前几天，她加入了贾格尔。它还为人们和组织提供了更多关注人们生活的机会。

The pandemic has certainly provided new obstacles for most everyone, but Andre found some silver linings.

“这确实影响了我作为一名女性的工作世界，例如，作为一名母亲，”安德烈说。“不久前有一段时间，如果背景中有孩子的声音或任何事情发生，我会感到羞愧。我不想让人们质疑我的奉献和专注。”

“But now it's welcomed. We have people who are bringing their kids into meetings, and I think it makes it a little bit more of a kinder and gentler place. It certainly provides a level of empathy for your teammates (female or male) because you really never know what's going on.”

Read about other professionals featured in our "Women in Procurement Wednesdays" series.Are you a woman in the procurement space who has a compelling story to tell? We’re all ears. Send us an email at:sehrmann@www.szcsmm.com.