Sourcing your way to a sustainable future

Thomas leads the dynamic Procurement function at Bayer, the global Life Science company. “Health for all, hunger for none" is Bayer’s vision and the guiding principle for Thomas and his leadership team. Procurement is determined to ignite Bayer’s external partners, to enable profitable and sustainable growth benefiting patients, farmers and consumers around the world. Procurement’s value add is not limited to financials but includes crucial levers like innovation and new business models. Moreover, his team contributes to safeguarding the reputation of Bayer by unconditional adherence to the principles of sustainability, with proactive risk management and by ensuring compliance. ‍ Sustainability is a matter close to Thomas’ heart, inspiring and driving him way beyond his Bayer duties. With the Sustainable Procurement Pledge, Thomas has privately co-founded this initiative. He strives to activate SPP Ambassadors around the globe to drive a much needed change towards responsible behavior and sustainable decision-making across supply chains. At Bayer, Thomas reports directly to the CFO. His team of around 1,500 professionals manages an annual spend of ~21 billion Euros.

Natalie Harris is dynamic and results-driven Procurement Professional with 20+ years’ experience delivering outstanding bottom-line profits, managing procurement operations, and executing strategic sourcing programs. She has transformed multiple supply chain operations incorporating business process redesign and change management techniques into solutions that are repeatable and sustainable. ‍ She has a proven ability to combine passion, creativity, and drive with well-developed communication and problem-solving skills to consistently manage multiple projects simultaneously, streamline operational efficiency, develop goals, drive continuous process improvement, cultivate client and supplier rapport to improve engagement, and establish customer-focused policies and procedures.

Cyril became Chief Procurement Officer of BT Group in October 2019. He joined from Sprint (US – Now T-Mobile) where he had been Vice President and then Chief Procurement Officer from 2016 - 2019. Prior to that, he served on the Chief Procurement Officer of Saudi Telecom between 2013 to 2016, and was a board member and Chairman of the Audit Committee of Saleco and STC Advanced Solution. Lastly Cyril served as Senior Vice President of Procurement Excellence at Buyin, the procurement joint-venture of Deutsche Telekom and Orange. He also held senior leadership positions with Orange in France and the UK and started in the telecom industry with SFR (Altice France).

Sandy Gray is the global leader for the Consumer Goods & Retail sector for EcoVadis. With more than 20 years of experience, she is a trusted partner for large global organizations on the topics of sustainability and risk. Currently, she is helping consumer goods & retail organizations develop and deploy their procurement sustainability roadmaps, workstreams & performance metrics. Prior to joining EcoVadis, Sandy was one of the original leaders of RapidRatings, a risk solution assessing financial health of suppliers, vendors and third parties. Sandy has enjoyed a career in technology solutions working companies like AT&T, Gartner and IDG. She is located in the New York City metro.

Kevin Frechette is the CEO and Co-Founder of Fairmarkit, the autonomous sourcing platform. Since starting Fairmarkit as a tail spend automation solution, he has met with and learned from thousands of supply chain and procurement executives to understand where technology can transform procurement. Kevin’s current focus is on exploring the possibilities for AI and automation across procurement and supply chain processes, most recently Generative AI. He notably has led Fairmarkit to being ranked 159th fastest growing company in America by Inc5000. Most importantly, he’s a girl dad to three “spirited” daughters and one son.