Kristen Daihes
Vice President of Global Supply Chain
Mars Snacking
BSEE 1996
Kristen is the Vice President of Global Supply Chain for the Mars Snacking business. She joined Mars to explore how the intersection of her prior industry experience and more recent tech start-up experiences could support the acceleration of a transformation agenda. She is leading an investment program to digitize and transform the supply chain within Mars to create an agile and flexible omni-channel supply chain, accelerate the data & analytics agenda, and boost supply chain capabilities.
Kristen has rich industry and start-up experience leading supply chains and creating supply chain solutions for global organizations. Most recently she was a Partner for the tech start-up Opex Analytics and supported a number of companies to reinvent their supply chains and operations with artificial intelligence, machine learning, and advanced analytics. Opex Analytics was acquired twice during the recent pandemic by software companies (LLamasoft in 2019, Coupa Software in 2020), after which she stood up Navigare Supply Chain Consulting to advise CSCOs and COOs as they embarked on their digital transformation agendas.
Earlier in her career, she held strategic planning, innovation, and engineering roles in Procter & Gamble and Unilever and was the Vice President of Global Supply Chain for SC Johnson. She holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering from Purdue University and an MBA from the University of Chicago.
Kristen has been recognized as a “Pro to Know” and “Top Woman in Supply Chain” from Supply & Demand Chain Executive, recognized by B2G Consulting as one of the “100 Most Influential Women in Supply Chain”, and was recognized by Supply Chain Digital as one of the “Top 100 Women in Supply Chain”. She is a Chicago founding member of CHIEF, Board Member of Children’s Place Association, a Chicago Roundtable leader of the Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals, and a member of the Supply Chain World 50 community.