Helping small to mid-sized manufacturers successfully grow into retail by building a solid supply chain fueling 2X/3X growth.

VP-Level supply chain executive with 15 years leading enterprise execution and working capital performance in complex, high-volume, high-SKU environments. I currently lead the enterprise supply chain engine at Vestis (formerly Aramark Uniform Services), spanning SIOP/IBP, demand planning, supply planning, purchasing, production management, and inventory management, with a team of 28.

Scope & scale: $150M inventory, $500M annual spend influence, 20K+ SKUs, and a distributed global organization, executive-facing cadence across Sales/Ops/Finance. 

I’m known for turning ambiguity into execution — building operating cadence, accountability, and cross-functional alignment with Sales, Operations, and Finance to deliver measurable results: inventory reduction, improved fill rates, backorder elimination, and stronger cash flow performance.

Highlights include:
•	Improved fill rates by 16% and increased inventory turns (reducing inventory 19% within 14 months)
•	Reduced backorders by 64% by implementing an SIOP framework aligned to business priorities
•	Reorganized a global supply chain team to improve retention, engagement, and scalability

Operating model: executive SIOP/IBP cadence; KPI ownership across service, inventory and working capital.

Long-term, I’m focused on VP-level supply chain leadership where I can lead end-to-end execution and transformation across planning, procurement, manufacturing/operations, and logistics execution.

Leadership style: calm, direct, accountable, and people-first.

Lindsey Walker

Inventory is the most misunderstood line item on the balance sheet.

Some leaders treat it like an asset.
In reality, it’s like cash tucked under a mattress — safe, but not earning anything… and quietly losing value over time.

And inventory rarely gets “fixed” in Excel.
It gets fixed through better decisions.

In my experience, excess inventory usually comes from:
• unclear service policies (“everything is priority”)
• long/unreliable lead times
• too many SKUs with no segmentation
• incentives that reward “just in case” behavior
• SIOP/IBP meetings that report… but don’t decide

The goal isn’t just less inventory.
It’s the right inventory — aligned to service, constraints, and cash.

👉 What’s one lever that’s made the biggest difference reducing inventory without hurting service?

#SupplyChain #Inventory #WorkingCapital #SIOP #Operations

VP-Level Supply Chain Leader | $150M Inventory | $500M Spend | Plan-Buy-Make | Working Capital & Service

SiteOne Landscape Supply

Sr. Manager, DC Replenishment

Paramount Global Surfaces

- The Supply Chain Development (SCD) team developed and launched a company first, automated sales forecasting and time-phased ordering model that projects SOQs, receipts, on-hands, etc.  This model is now the foundation for company-wide SIOP, Open-to-Buy, capacity planning, labor planning, financial planning, and scenario analysis and is slated to reduce inventory levels by ~50% while increasing service levels to >95%

- Using Microsoft Dynamics, SQL Server, Power BI, Tableau, and Power Apps, the SCD team developed a full suite of BI solutions that lead to the creation of informative, consistent, and actionable KPIs throughout the entire organization

- The Supply Chain Operations (SCO) team underwent a major transformation from being exclusively tactical and execution focused to strategic and planning by buying-in to and creating a positive, leadership driven culture around the following tenets. 1) Better Everyday, 2) Solutions Over Problems, 3) Take Action; Don’t Delay, 4) Lead with Integrity

- Using the newly created tools such as PO create and edit	 upload and more timely and relevant reporting, the SCO team owns and drives the overall SIOP, Open-to-Buy, and vendor management program.  Applying a greater degree of focus to cross-functional collaboration enables the team to plan and prepare for upcoming events and macro trends

Director, Supply Chain Development & Operations

Amazon

- P&L owner of the Arts, Crafts, & Sewing ($700M) category on Amazon.com; negotiated $20M+ in annualized free cash flow within the first two months of taking over the category

- Partnered closely with the vendor community to provide enhanced training, visibility, and clarity to Amazon’s inbound compliance program, resulting in an annualized chargeback savings of $20M with 20% of the savings reinvested into sales driving initiatives

- Converted $40M of low priced, high volume selection into multipacks yielding ~10% above the line and ~50% below profitability

- Transitioned $50M in domestically sourced goods to direct import resulting in ~9% margin improvement

Sr. Vendor Manager, Home & Kitchen

- Responsible for the P&L of the Cotton Print and Flannel product categories; developed and executed the category strategy, growing annualized topline revenue v2019 by 37.5% with no impact to profitability, while at the same time rationalizing and reducing the overall selection by ~20%

- Built a strong relationship with the vendor community by curating mutually beneficial marketing, promotion, influencer, coop programs, and a direct relationship with Amazon.com resulting in a YoY increase in vendor coop participation of 30%

Sr. Vendor Manager, Fabric.com

HD Supply

- Develop, grow, and promote a talented four person team responsible for designing, building, and delivering multiple concurrent Supply Chain Planning, Analytics, Systems, and Business Intelligence solutions, directly contributing to a 40% SG&A reallocation to more productive planning / strategy roles

- Business lead for the design, build, testing, training, and integration of JDA’s Intelligent Fulfillment, Dynamic Allocation, and Inventory Optimization (IO) systems

- Using SAP’s S4 HANA as the primary development platform, delivered multiple systems, analytical tools, and BI solutions including but not limited to Statistical Safety Stock, Supply Planning Parameter Management, Economic Order Quantity, Order Frequency Optimization, Standardized Stocking Strategy, & Tableau Dashboard Suite

- Serve as a strategic planning leader, collaborating daily with Supply Chain leadership on short term operational solutions and long term transformation initiatives

Sr. Manager, Supply Chain Analytics

- Recruited and hired a 21 person inventory management team then planned and executed an eight-week business operations transition from San Diego to Atlanta

- Provided servant leadership to a six person team responsible for the inventory performance of over one-third of the company spanning 120K product locations, $600M in COGS, and $120M in inventory

- Developed and integrated a number of supply planning and execution strategies including but not limited to a multi-echelon ordering algorithm, containerization model, inventory rebalancing tool, and standardized safety stock strategy enterprise wide that yielded a 98% customer service level while reducing overall inventory dollars by $30M (~10%)

- Built a seasonally adjusted, exponential smoothing sales forecasting model that yielded an almost immediate 150% reduction in MAPE from 200% to 50%

Manager, Inventory Management

The Home Depot

- Led a four person team responsible for inventory performance (in-stock, turn ratio, vendor management, and respective financial business impact) of over 4.5M product locations, $3.0B in sales, and $750M in import and domestic inventory

- Accountable for the inventory financial forecast, articulating the merchandising and inventory strategies to Merchandise Finance and Supply Chain Finance partners, and negotiating resolutions to conflicts that arise

- Improved 3 of the 6 product categories from missing to exceeding inventory turnover goals; all product categories met the turns goal at least 6 of 8 quarters

- Advised Merchandising during the product line review process with respect to driving assortment productivity by eliminating poor performing items and evaluating the marginal rate of substitution as it applies to sales of existing items

Manager, Inventory Planning

- Executed the merchandising strategy by way of inventory in the $1.3B revenue, $350M inventory Light Bulb category

- Successfully planned, managed, and executed the introduction of 150+ items and multiple major promotional events in a highly innovative, complex, and visible category; ushering in the nationwide adoption of LED lighting solutions

- Increased YoY in-stocks by 100bps and vendor fill rate over 10% by closely partnering with the vendor community on the sales forecast and purchasing projections

Sr. Analyst, Inventory Planning

- Led the accuracy reporting and seasonal profile clustering work streams while implementing Teradata’s Demand Chain Management (DCM) sales forecasting platform; substantial use of SQL during project analytics and daily responsibilities

- Accountable for the forecast accuracy of 20M+ product locations, $26B in sales, and $6.0B in inventory; partnered with Merchandising and Inventory Planning teams to optimize the forecast accuracy for promotions, seasonal programs, and assortment changes

- Held multiple leadership roles on the Advanced Service Level project to create a complex mathematical model for calculating safety stock for items with non-normal demand distributions, job lot quantities and seasonality

Analyst, Inventory Analytics - Sales Forecasting & Advanced Service Level

Auburn University

Publication:  Gropper, Daniel M., Robert A. Lawson, and Jere T. Thorne Jr. 
"Economic Freedom and Happiness." The Cato Journal 31.2 (2011): 237-55. Print.

Graduate Teaching Assistant

Georgia Agribusiness Council

Member Advocate

Innovative supply chain operations and analytics leader with a depth of experience in organizational transformation; cross functional leadership; systems solutions; analytics; sales, inventory, and operations planning (SIOP); supply chain optimization; demand and supply planning; and distribution process improvement. Success in development and implementation of complex, people / process / systems initiatives throughout the organization. Broad experience in sustaining high levels of supply chain efficiency, sales, service, and productivity through establishing organizational culture, metrics, and accountability. Seek to build and maintain relationships with key stakeholders of the business to garner support for enterprise initiatives.

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