By all accounts, working with supportive, effective mentors (whether male or female) is essential. Speaking at the
Making personal connections with women supply chain
professionals who have achieved that level of success is
ideal, but with few of them available, an additional way
I’ve worked in virtually every segmentof this business; there’s very little ourpeople are doing every day that Ihaven’t done myself. That puts me ina position of empathy, which is reallyimportant. It helps you to know wherethe cracks are and to know where people can make the business better everyday. I would also say that one of themost important experiences has beendirect contact with customers at virtually every supply chain touch point.
That is probably the most importantand valuable experience in my toolbox.
It’s my job, essentially, to spend everyminute of every day making customers’lives easier. Because of my own experience, I have the tools to instill that culture in every aspectof this enterprise.
Q: What do you bring as a woman in a leadership role? Or
does gender not matter in effective leadership?
I don’t believe gender is relevant, but I do believe diversityis. At Janel we want to have lots of different people atall levels with different ideas who can see problems andfigure out how to fix them. Gender plays a role in that,of course, but it’s not the sole aspect. Our senior team,in fact, is intentionally diverse across gender, cultures,and experience. Some of our senior leaders are from verylarge companies and some are from smaller firms. Theyhave different experiences solving the same problems. Abig company, for example, will have more resources anda wider perspective on what a solution might be and willapproach a problem in a very different way than small“mom and pop” shops do. The latter tend to be scrappierand maybe a little more creative in how they go aboutproblem solving—and maybe a little more efficient inhow they make things happen. That doesn’t necessarilymake it better. Our thinking is, let’s take advantage ofboth approaches to find the best answer.
Q: Do you have any advice for other women moving into
C-level positions?
The most important thing is to go for it! Even if you’re not
sure if you fit every single bullet point in a job description,
don’t hesitate. If you’re a natural in terms of leadership,
with other people to learn. That’s number 1.
Number 2, I think it’s important to help other people besuccessful, especially young people who are just startingout. My generation of leaders learned by doing differentjobs ourselves, but the kids today approach things differently than we do. One of the delights of diversity is tohelp them figure out how to be successful in their ownway. If you do that, it will help your company be moresuccessful.
I have spent more time on that lately and find it personally satisfying and very helpful to our organization. I wasincredibly blessed when I was coming up in the industryto work for three really talented entrepreneurs who gaveme a lot of opportunities. They let me try my hand atselling, and they let me travel to Asia to develop agencypartnerships. They let me oversee automation development and implementation. Importantly, they let me failand learn from that. I’m grateful for their support, and Iconsider it an obligation to make a similar contribution byhelping future leaders.
And finally, when you mess up, move on. Don’t wallow! I did that early on, and it’s not productive. Theclock on the wall keeps ticking and people are countingon you. Don’t waste time on nonproductive things, justcourse-correct and keep going.
Name: Karen M. Kenney
Title: President, Janel Group Inc.
Previous Experience: VicePresident, Global Partnerships,Janel Group; Chief OperatingOfficer, Liberty International Inc.
Volunteer Experience: Foundingmember and chair of the Coalitionof New England Companies forTrade (CONECT); adviser to U.S.
Customs and Border Protection’sCommercial Operations AdvisoryCommittee (COAC), includingone term as Trade chair of theTrade Enforcement and RevenueCollection Subcommittee; servedas advisory board member ofthe Massachusetts MaritimeAcademy’s International Maritime Business program
