Procurement AI Council

As Vice President for Corporate Development at Zycus Inc., Richard Waugh leads strategic initiatives in the areas of new product introduction, market development, thought leadership, analyst relations, and strategic partner development programs. Richard has an extensive background in B2B E-Commerce. He helped launch GEs Trading Process Network (TPN), the first on-line Marketplace for Sourcing and Procurement. He was also Co-Founder of B2eMarkets, one of the first SaaS (Software as a Service) Sourcing Suite providers and later covered the Supply Management market as an Industry Analyst for the Aberdeen Group

Dawn Tiura is the President and CEO of Sourcing Industry Group (SIG), the world’s premier membership association representing Fortune 500 and Global 1000 companies with a combined spend of $17 trillion USD in sourcing and outsourcing. SIG’s goal is to elevate the strategic impact of these organizations on their company’s top and bottom lines. Dawn is also the President of SIG University, an online and in-person training and education organization that offers certifications in sourcing, governance, risk management and intelligent automation. Dawn has a passion to improve sustainability in global supply chains, she helps organizations to meet the 17 Sustainable Development Goals as part of SIG’s UN Alliance and is an ambassador to the Sustainable Procurement Pledge. Dawn has over 25 years of leadership experience, with the past 20 years focused on the sourcing and outsourcing industry. She is a frequent speaker, presenter and writer. Dawn has been featured at global events and in numerous publications, magazines, videos and books. Prior to joining SIG, Dawn held leadership positions as founder and CEO of Denali Group and before that as a partner in a CPA firm, focused on early Silicon Valley enterprises and high wealth individuals. Dawn is the proud mother of six and actively involved on several boards promoting civic, health and children’s issues in the Jacksonville, Florida area. Dawn is a licensed CPA and has a BBA from the University of Michigan and an MS in International Taxation from Golden Gate University.

Hervé Le Faou serves as the Chief Procurement Officer at HEINEKEN, the world’s most international brewer. HEINEKEN operates in over 70 countries globally and is committed to surprising and exciting consumers everywhere. Since joining HEINEKEN in 2016, Hervé has been leading a transformational programme within the Global Procurement function, with the intention of creating a world-class strategic sourcing community that operates as a true business partner.
His Procurement community currently manages €14 billion of spend and consists out of 900 professionals based around the globe. Creating sustainable business value for both internal and external stakeholders is the key focus of the second chapter of the transformation programme. Together with his team, Hervé strives to make a positive impact that lasts and touches areas beyond the cost and cash agenda.
Having spent over half of his professional career abroad, Hervé brings a strong international leadership to his team. This, coupled with his strong passion for people, innovation and brands, has proven to be a great recipe for success when leading transformations in the food and beverage industry.

Russ serves as USAA’s Chief Procurement Officer (CPO). As CPO, Russ leads the Global Sourcing and Procurement (GSP) organization which enables companies and staff agencies (CoSAs) to meet their goals with third-party products or services. GSP includes category management, sourcing and procurement, enterprise third party risk management (TPRM), global sourcing operations, and associated support functions. Russ joined USAA in 2018 as Vice President, TPRM officer in the Enterprise Risk and Compliance organization. He led the team that built USAA’s TPRM program. Prior to joining USAA, Russ spent 14 years at Bank of America leading teams in procurement and TPRM. He developed and led the TPRM program at Bank of America and last served as their procurement executive for Global Technology and Operations. Russ’s leadership experience includes sourcing for frontline teams, vendor process and technology, and internal controls. Russ graduated from the United States Air Force Academy with a bachelor’s degree in Science and Engineering. He also earned a master’s degree in Logistics Management from the Air Force Institute of Technology. Russ served nine years on active duty with the Air Force and has been a USAA member since 1989. Russ serves on the board for the Veteran’s Bridge Home, a Charlotte, NC based non-profit organization that bridges the gap between Veterans and their community. Russ is married to Katherine McDonald. He has three daughters Sydney, Shelby, Madeline, and two sons Colton and Maxwell.

Kishore Pejavara is the Director of Supply Chain Center of Excellence at Delta Air Lines. He leads a team focused on building a world-class supply chain organization to drive customer experience, operational excellence, and innovation.

A seasoned executive, he is passionate about building highly effective organizations by empowering people with the right data, processes, and technology to accelerate value creation. As the head of the CoE he leads the Supply Chain Portfolio Strategy, Advanced Analytics, Third-Party Risk Management, and Technology functions across the enterprise.

Kishore holds an MBA from Emory’s Goizueta Business School and a Bachelors of Engineering from Pune University.

Brian Roche is responsible for Westfield’s enterprise procurement function and the development and execution of source-to-pay capabilities including category management, third party risk management, operational procurement and process automation.
Brian joined Westfield in April 2015 from Citizens Bank, where he served in various leadership positions managing vendor risk, strategic sourcing events and technology, and training programs. Before that, he was Vice President, Senior Sourcing Strategist for Key Bank National Association. In all, he brings 20 years of procurement, financial and leadership experience to his position with Westfield.
Brian earned his graduate degree in Information Systems Management from Case Western Reserve University, and his undergraduate degree in Finance from Ohio University.
He is a former member of BITS, the technology policy division of the Financial Services Roundtable, an industry group with expertise on managing supply chain risk, and served as a charter Steering Committee member on Risk Management Association’s Vendor Management Roundtable. He is also a current member of Sourcing Industry Group and provides thought leadership in other industry forums on evolving areas of supply chain management.

Ninad serves as the Head of Procurement at Government Employees Health Association (GEHA). He has been dedicated to supply chain and procurement profession since last 18+ years. During this time, he has held roles with increasing responsibility in manufacturing & service oriented companies within Communications (mission critical OEM + Telco), Healthcare (Med-tech + Insurance) and Industrial sectors.
He is a true believer in potential of supply chain and procurement to be key differentiators and success drivers for business. As a passionate product and operations leader, he has honed his leadership skills through all phases of life cycle – from new product development to cancellation management, from category management to global sourcing, from tactical operations to strategic planning/sourcing and risk management and from shop floor management to C-suite.
In his career, he was fortunate enough to lead multiple transformations to help build sourcing functions and global diverse teams ground-up, creating vision/strategy/management structure and scaling teams for long term success. In addition to supply chain operations experience, he also had an opportunity to set-up a device sales function for a Telecom and to grow it to billion+ dollar revenue.
Ninad is trained as an engineer and also holds MBA from Kellogg School of Management.

Purvee Kondal is a Vice President of Strategic Sourcing at the Sephora Companies, an advisory board member at RampRate, and a National Association of Corporate Directors Accelerate program participant. She is a seasoned executive with over 15 years of experience leading transformational changes at notable organizations such as Johnson & Johnson, General Electric, Capgemini, Ross Stores and Globality. As a champion of diversity and inclusion, she co-chairs the Fellowship Nomination Committee at the Athena Rising Foundation as an Athena Alliance member.
She helps companies identify value and improve efficiencies for Procurement, Sourcing, and Vendor Management functions through advanced technology, collaboration, innovation, diversity and partnerships. She was nominated for “Transformation Leader of the Year” by the Women in IT Summit & Awards Series in 2020.
Purvee holds an MBA from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University and a Bachelor of Science in Marketing from San Jose State University.

Rajeev Karmacharya is Head of the Strategic Sourcing and Category Management group in Fannie Mae. Rajeev leads a team of category management, sourcing / contracting and supplier enablement professionals managing $4.5+ billion in external spend.
Prior to joining Fannie Mae, Rajeev was a Principal at global management consulting firm Kearney, where he was one of the leaders in their Strategic IT and Operations Practice. Rajeev holds a Master of Industrial Administration (MBA) degree in Finance and Marketing from Carnegie Mellon University and a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science from Slippery Rock University of Pennsylvania.

Over a career spanning more than 30 years, Steve has held senior procurement and operations positions with large and small, public and private, and for-profit as well as non-profit organizations. He joined the College Board in 2016 after serving as Vice President of Global Sourcing at National Geographic Society, and prior to that, as Vice President of Supply Chain Management at Vertis Communications, a national printer of advertising circulars and direct mail promotions. He has also held positions at Comcast as Sr. Director of Resource Management, and Becker Group as Vice President of Operations. Hughes started his purchasing career at Hallmark Cards in Kansas City following five years of military service as a US Army officer at Fort Bragg, NC with the 82nd Airborne Division, where he completed 40 military parachute jumps.

Erik van Dulmen is Vice President Not for Resale Sourcing for Ahold Delhaize, leading indirect procurement in Europe. Together with the local brands in Europe his team is delivering the best sourcing solution for Ahold Delhaize’s businesses.
He is what we call a veteran within Ahold Delhaize, working for almost 35 years in different business areas. Erik started his career at James Telesuper, the home delivery business of former Ahold in the mid 1980’s as full time IT programmer. Before leading indirect procurement for Ahold Delhaize, Erik worked within the Finance department ( regional controller and head of Commercial and Logistics Control at Albert Heijn ), the operational department ( operational manager North Holland at Albert Heijn ), logistics department ( warehouse manager at Albert Heijn Zaandam ) and the commercial department ( Director Sourcing and Merchandise Dry Groceries Albert Heijn ).
Erik is born in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, and graduated with a bachelors degree in Economics in Rotterdam.

Mr. Sawchuk is a Principal, Global Practice Leader and advisory leadership team member with The Hackett Group, an intellectual property-based strategic consultancy to global companies.

He has over 20 years of experience successfully advising hundreds of Fortune 500 as well as midsized companies across all industries globally. Mr. Sawchuk has provided operational and transformational guidance in strategy and organizational change as well as process design and digital technology enablement to significantly improve the efficiency and effectiveness of these companies.

He is globally recognized (and won several awards) in his specialty of supply management including strategic sourcing and risk management. He is cited regularly in business publications, a frequent presenter at industry and academic events, author of numerous research papers and books, and a current and past member of the advisory boards of several developing companies as well as the supply chain degree program at the University of South Florida.

Mr. Sawchuk’s background includes engineering, operations and sales roles with both United Technologies and IBM. He holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Electrical Engineering from Union College and a Masters in Business Administration from Binghamton University (State University of New York). He is currently pursuing his Doctorate in Business Administration from the University of South Florida.

A Strategic visionary with foresight and imagination, Shy Chalakudi has an impressive 20+ history of surpassing ambitious business goals, leading revolutionary data-first digital transformations that create memorable customer experiences. 

Known for being a trusted advisor and data technology expert for Fortune 100 global companies, Shy has a consistent record of positioning organization for ground up transformation success, spurring multi-million dollar business growth connecting data insights across revenue streams.

Shy’s contributions stands at the forefront of the nexus of forces – social, mobile, cloud and information technologies.  She orchestrates enterprise data strategy to fuel the design of the machine learning framework that deliver conceptual containerized technology on-premise with scalability to Cloud that drive unique competitive advantage.

A calculated risk taker, her digital centric, fast-tracked, R&D data technologies innovation  for targeted ideas resulted in three unique Blockchain technology patents.

Throughout her tenure across financial, technology and product sectors, Shy has a reputation of delivering data engineering innovation that has lead to the creation of self-service federated enterprise common data fabric with increased efficiency managed through multi-tenant governance and robust resource isolation orchestration.

She is currently pursuing her doctoral thesis on Artificial Intelligence and Deep Learning, specializing on Social Networks & Influence Marketing Strategies. Shy lives in our Austin, Texas location, married to a technology geek, and has two kids – a son and a daughter.

Global Chief Procurement Officer since February 2022, Florence Tinsley-Roy has expertise in the transformation of procurement teams, as well as in developing local and global strategies.

With over 27 years of experience in Supply Chain Management, I have a proven track record of driving digital transformation and implementing innovative strategies to optimize operations. Currently serving as the Head of SCM – VP at TATA PLAY LIMITED, I lead the procurement, operations, logistics, and digital transformations efforts. My expertise in implementing Robotic Process Automation (RPA) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) has revolutionized processes and ensured substantial cost savings.

I worked in the spectrum of Industries, viz DTH, Telecom, White Goods, Manufacturing, and Automobile. Throughout my career, I have managed large-scale deals, fostered supplier relationships, and led cross-functional teams to achieve ambitious goals. My strategic vision has consistently delivered significant savings and enhanced the overall efficiency of supply chain operations. I am passionate about leveraging AI to drive efficiencies and build high-performing teams, ensuring the organization stays ahead in the ever-evolving digital landscape.