Plenary Speakers

Dr. Sanders is an internationally recognized thought leader and expert in forecasting, predictive analytics, risk management and supply chain management. Her expertise is identifying best practices in forecasting, developing a corporate technology strategy, digital transformation, and creating a resilient supply chain. Throughout her career Dr. Sanders has successfully held a range of leadership roles in both academic and professional organizations, has served on numerous executive boards, and is a frequently called upon keynote speaker.

She is author of the books Humachine (Routledge, forthcoming), Supply Chain Analytics (Prospect Press), Big Data Driven Supply Chain Management (Pearson), Foundations of Sustainable Business (Wiley), Forecasting Fundamentals (BEP) as well as Supply Chain Management: A Global Perspective in its 2^nd edition (Wiley), and Operations Management, in its 7th edition. She was ranked in the top 8 percent of individuals in the field of operations management from a pool of 738 by a study of research productivity in U.S. business schools. She is President-Elect of the Production and Operations Management Society (POMS) and is a Fellow of the Decision Sciences Institute. She has also served on the Board of Directors of the International Institute of Forecasters (IIF), Decision Sciences Institute (DSI), and the Production Operations Management Society (POMS). She was co-founder and Associate Editor of Foresight: The International Journal of Applied Forecasting.

Dr. Sanders is the Distinguished Professor of Supply Chain Management at the D’Amore-McKim School of Business at Northeastern University. Previously she served as the Iacocca Chair at Lehigh University and as the West Chair and Professor of Supply Chain Management the M.J. Neeley School of Business, Texas Christian University, where she was also Research Director of the Supply and Value Chain Center. She holds a Ph.D. in Operations Management and Logistics, and an MBA, from the Fisher College of Business at The Ohio State University, as well as a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering.

She has provided training and consulting to a range of Fortune 500 companies, including IDG, Nike, AT&T, CIBA Corning, Mattel, Schottenstein Corp., Cognitive TPG, MTC Corp., Dell, and many others, and is a frequent expert witness having worked with firms such as Jones Day; Vorys, Sater, Seymour and Pease; and others. Most notably she served for Quinn, Emanuel, Urquhart & Sullivan, LLP providing expert testimony and deposition in the Mattel vs. MGA case regarding forecasting process, information technology use and impact of data presentation on decision making.

She has experience collaborating with industry and NGO leaders creating teams of both faculty and practitioners to jointly address research questions. As Research Director of the Supply and Value Chain Center (SVCC) at TCU, she was instrumental in developing a programmatic research agenda that unified business challenges of SVCC members with faculty research interests. Recently she was asked to serve on the SCLA (Supply Chain Leaders in Action) Executive Committee, a by invitation only group of Fortune 1000 companies, charged with addressing pressing issues facing supply chain and logistics executives. Dr. Sanders has received numerous research and teaching awards, including the Carl Beidelman Research Award (2012) at Lehigh University, a university award given for highest quality research and was named the MBA Professor of the Year (2012).

Dr. Sanders has authored over one hundred scholarly works and has served on the editorial boards of prominent journals in her field, including the Journal of Operations Management, Production and Operations Management, Decision Sciences Journal, Journal of Business Logistics, and International Institute of Forecasting.  Her paper titled “How to Use Big Data to Drive Your Supply Chain,” (California Management Review, 58, 3, 2016, 26-48) was the top most downloaded paper for 2017 and listed as a “must read.”

In 2008 she was invited to serve as a participant at The Gordon Cook Conversations at Windsor Castle, UK. This retreat brought together a small diverse group of international leaders identified to have ‘star quality’ in order to develop strategies to impact society in the coming decade.