Kristy Bates has worked in the supply chain space for quite some time, just in different aspects. She started as a marketing manager for Uber, and after 5.5 years, joined Clearco as director of sales there. But it was when she joined GoBolt as SVP, revenue that she realized supply chain is a different beast.
"I felt like I was learning a new language, and but it was awesome because I was pushing myself outside of my comfort zone. I was at a company that was operating differently, and learning all sorts of new things, and I truly believe that my diversity and experience and my different background from the typical hire was something that became a superpower and something that I've really harnessed in being able to grow the team and scale and bring success to the to the global team and and ultimately drive revenue," says Bates.
It's for this and her other initiatives around workforce development that she was named the overall winner of the Workforce Innovator category for this year’s Women in Supply award.
Resources for female supply chain professionals
One of Bates' achievements is her creation of the Women's Employee Resource Group.
"As a woman who's been traditionally in tech in sales and then logistics, those are typically not industries that are populated with majority women, right? And so I've really felt the the need for a bit more of a community there, and it is actually something that we did at Uber that worked really well and so brought it to GoBolt. Essentially the Women's Employee Resource Group is a voluntary employee-led group that fosters that diverse, inclusive environment that ladders up to the company's missions, goals and values," says Bates. "We've done workshops around resilience, workshops around building confidence in the workplace. We share articles about career development or women in the workplace related. It really has become a super supportive avenue for people to share ideas, challenge each other and get that support."
Bates also developed a mentorship program that focuses on increasing communication, improving empathy across different cross-functional partners and providing more subject matter expertise.
"It's about ideas over hierarchy. The whole point in in these values is that it's not the C-suite that from the top down has the best ideas, and everyone else just follows. Be competent in your own ideas and your own questions and your own curiosities because you might just be the person that uncovers the next best big idea," she says.
WATCH our exclusive interview with Bates and learn more about about the importance of fostering subject matter expertise and independence with new hires and why ideas over hierarchy is crucial in building up internal teams.
CLICK HERE to meet all of this year's winners, effective Sept. 16.
