BY PETER BRADLEY, EDITORIAL DIRECTOR
THE DC VELOCITY Q&A
thoughtleaders
INTERVIEW WITH
JOSEPH ESTRELLA
For more than three decades,
Joseph Estrella held supply chain
management positions for major
companies. He now brings that
experience to bear in the classroom
at the University of Rhode Island.
FOR THE PAST FOUR YEARS, JOSEPH ESTRELLA HAS
worked full time as a lecturer at the University of Rhode
Island (URI), where he teaches operations, global supply
chain management, international transportation, and other
courses to both undergraduate and graduate students.
He brings to those classes more than 35 years of experience as a logistics and transportation professional. He held
management positions for Roadway Express, Staples, and
CVS. Before joining URI full time, he taught there part time
while serving as director of the transportation and logistics
network for CVS.
Estrella recently spoke with Editorial Director Peter
Bradley about his industry experience and the supply chain
program at URI.
Q Tell me a little bit about your experience in private industry.
A I have had a terrific career. I worked for what were arguably the three best companies in their respective
industries at the time. I worked for Roadway Express for 15
years in roles ranging from dock supervisor and sales repre-
sentative to posts in operations management and terminal
management. For my last six years there, I was the labor
relations manager for New England. Roadway was a great
place to learn about transportation and logistics, but more
importantly, I think, Roadway had a terrific way of teaching
you how to deal with people. During my time at Roadway, I
certainly learned about honesty, integrity, and ethics.
The next stop in my career was working at Staples, which
was a rather young company at the time. I am very proud to
say that I was a big part of setting up the distribution process for the catalog division, which at the time was called
Staples Direct. That part of the business grew very quickly.
In fact, in two years, we went from $28 million in sales to
$310 million. I certainly learned a lot about the retail industry working at Staples. I then moved to CVS and worked
there for a long time. When I joined CVS, the company
had no stores west of the Mississippi, and now, through
tremendous acquisition and growth, it is a national and
international company.
I was fortunate. I got to work in three really good areas
with three really good companies, which serves me well
now that I am at the University of Rhode Island.
Q What made you take the leap from supply chain pro- fessional to educator?
A While I was at CVS, we were contacted by URI to work on a distribution project. That was my first interaction
with URI. URI then asked me to serve on its Supply Chain
Advisory Committee, which is made up of URI faculty and
business people in the community. Later, URI asked me to
be an adjunct, so I started teaching one course a semester,
which I really enjoyed. About four years ago, URI asked if
I wanted to teach full time. I think the timing was right for
Bringing long industry
experience to the classroom
