An agenda built through deep collaboration with our community to ensure every session delivers substance over soundbites. You’ll hear from true subject matter leaders via candid case studies, collaborative roundtables, and varied panel discussions —providing clarity on what’s driving success across the marketing landscape.
CPO Breakfast Briefing: The Human Advantage: How Leading CPOs Win in an Era of AI and Permanent Volatility - Hosted by Proxima
A closed-door session for CPOs and VP-level buyers. Structured peer conversation on where procurement sits organisationally, how reporting lines are shaping priorities in 2026, and what it actually means to hold the function's credibility at board level right now.
Volatility is no longer episodic. It is permanent. As organizations face an increasingly complex mix of economic, geopolitical, operational, and technological disruption, leading CPOs are discovering that competitive advantage comes not from reacting faster, but from leading better. Join fellow procurement leaders for a conversation on the decisions and capabilities of building organizations that thrive amid uncertainty.
Registration and breakfast open from 7:30am, followed by facilitated networking from 8:15–8:45am.
This session is designed to support efficient, high‑value peer connections through a series of light‑touch formats, including:
• Optional 1:1 peer connects based on shared challenges
• Curated conversation stations
• 'Find someone who' networking game where you grab a persona pin, swap sticks and stories, meet new people
The objective is to enable meaningful conversations and connections early in the day, setting the tone ahead of the formal programme.
Peer‑led discussions on current sourcing pressures, capability gaps, and risk exposure.
Each pod takes one question:
1) Where is your biggest sourcing exposure right now, and does your CFO know?
2) Which procurement decisions are you making today that you couldn't have made two years ago?
3) Where is your team the bottleneck, and where is it the solution?
Pods report back one insight each. Sets the room's agenda for the day.
Case Study Presentation with ORO Labs - The Strategic Orchestrator: Scaling Agent-Led Procurement Across Idea-to-Pay
• Transform fragmented procurement activities into a connected Idea-to-Pay operating model where AI agents streamline execution, reduce manual effort and enable faster, more informed decisions.
• Establish the governance, controls and accountability required to scale agentic AI with confidence across procurement and the wider business.
• Measure the impact of agent-led procurement through outcomes that matter to the enterprise, including productivity gains, stakeholder satisfaction, compliance and business value creation.
• Build a long-lead sourcing strategy that locks preferred-supplier positions across power infrastructure and specialty materials before capacity constraints make availability, not price, the primary competitive variable for industrial buyers
• Close the supply visibility gap by extending E2E mapping into the semiconductor, specialty chemical, and energy infrastructure tiers most exposed to reshoring displacement and grid reliability shocks
• Deliver procurement resilience against the infrastructure supercycle by designing dual sourcing and nearshoring models that can absorb fab expansion demand signals without triggering cascading cost and lead-time failures across the supply base
Ard Verboon, Chief Procurement Officer - Schenider Electric
Moderator: Lefteris Iakovou, Professor of Industrial Distribution & Associate Director, Supply Chain Resilience - Texas A&M University
• Concierge Meetings Service: pre-matched 15-minute conversations with solution providers
• Challenge + Solution Exchange Groups: self-selected small groups organised around a live procurement challenge
• Exhibition walk with guided context: solution providers briefed to lead with use cases, not capability lists
• Close the false confidence gap in procurement's spend data by applying a diagnostic framework that maps where supplier master data, spend categorisation, and unmanaged spend are creating hidden commercial risk, before those weaknesses distort decisions on tariff exposure, supplier concentration, and working capital that the CFO cannot trust
• Accelerate the data improvement journey by sequencing intervention around the categories, supplier relationships, and spend pools where poor data is most costly right now, enabling the team to prioritise the fixes that drive the greatest business value without halting the day job
• Unlock a credible finance alignment conversation by defining what "good enough" looks like for procurement data to support CFO-level decisions on tariff exposure, supplier resilience, and AI-driven analytics, and what practical shared ownership of data quality between procurement and finance requires in practice
Jovely Larson, VP Sourcing - Wells Fargo
Michael Shin, Chief Supply Chain Officer - Trinity Rail
Moderator - Dawn Tiura, CEO - SIG
Case Study: Securing a Seat at the Design Table: How procurement is influencing product decisions earlier with Samsung SDS
• Learn how leading manufacturers are breaking down the traditional ""fence toss"" between engineering and procurement, enabling sourcing teams to influence component selection, supplier strategy, and cost targets before the bill of materials is finalized.
• Discover how Design-to-Source approaches help procurement identify single-source dependencies, improve supply resilience, accelerate time-to-market, and unlock supplier innovation while design flexibility still exists.
• Explore how AI-powered BOM intelligence and connected decision-making are equipping procurement teams with real-time cost, risk, and alternative sourcing insights, helping them become strategic partners in product development rather than downstream executors
• Strengthen supplier transparency under cost pressure by building the relational and contractual foundations that make suppliers more, not less, willing to share tariff exposure before it becomes a crisis
• Protect supply continuity in a tight market by developing the dual-sourcing intelligence, backup supplier relationships, and rapid-activation protocols that turn options into operational reality
• Deliver what strategic suppliers demand from a procurement partner by closing the gap between what most teams offer and the three things, technology, stability, and performance, that determine which customers suppliers protect first when capacity is constrained
Marcelo Stefani, Chief Procurement Officer - PepsiCo
Moderator: Bonnie Keith, Author
1) Make vs. Buy, Vertical Integration, and the Capital Trade-Off: When does bringing capability in-house stop being a resilience decision and start being a capital allocation mistake?
2) Supplier Collaboration and Innovation, Moving Beyond Risk Management: You call them strategic partners. Do they call you a strategic customer?
3) Board-Level Governance, Decision Rights, and Procurement's Seat at the Table: If procurement isn't in the room when the capital decision is made, whose fault is that?
4) Pricing Volatility, Rare Materials, and Unplanned Cost Increases: How do you govern the ungovernable?
• Concierge Meetings Service: pre-matched 15-minute conversations with solution providers
• Challenge + Solution Exchange Groups: self-selected small groups organised around a live procurement challenge
• Exhibition walk with guided context: solution providers briefed to lead with use cases, not capability lists
• Build risk-based category segmentation that ends the blanket resilience-versus-cost argument by giving procurement a structured method to determine, category by category, where depth, diversification, or a hybrid model delivers the best risk-adjusted outcome under real working capital constraints
• Strengthen category strategy credibility across finance and marketing by designing portfolio decisions around inventory exposure, cash cycle impact, and supplier concentration risk from the start, not as a retrospective justification for sourcing choices already made
• Drive category evolution from reactive cost management to proactive risk optimisation by establishing the trade-off thresholds, governance triggers, and finance alignment protocols that allow procurement to shift category posture as market conditions, tariff environments, and demand signals change
Ed McAndrews, Head of Procurement, Commercial Americas - AstraZeneca
• Accelerate working capital performance by replacing uniform payment‑term policies with targeted, invoice level interventions, focusing capital where it reduces exposure without destabilising critical supplier relationships
• Embed cash flow resilience into supplier commercial models by structuring payment flexibility, early‑pay options, and liquidity levers into contracts before inflation, interest‑rate shifts, or demand shocks force short term fixes
• Close the procurement-finance execution gap by establishing shared ownership of payment timing, cash‑flow forecasting, and working capital targets, ensuring optimisation decisions improve liquidity without undermining supply stability
• Forge a disruption resilience playbook by translating tariff shifts, geopolitical tensions, and extreme weather events into procurement decisions that are ready to execute before cost and supply exposure escalates beyond what contractual levers can recover.
• Close the supplier opportunism gap by designing agreements that lock in cost-sharing obligations, escalation rights, and trigger clauses before the next trade, climate, or geopolitical shock forces renegotiation from a weaker position.
• Equip leadership with a sourcing geography strategy that moves beyond reactive nearshoring and into a structured, board-ready view of supply chain exposure across friend-shoring, reshoring, dual-sourcing, and regional risk concentration.
Sarah Hill, VP Procurement - bp
Ana Esteves, VP Procurement - Mondelez
Moderator: Harold Nwariaku, Head of CIPS Americas - CIPS
Registration and breakfast open from 7:30am, followed by facilitated networking from 8:15–8:45am.
This session is designed to support efficient, high‑value peer connections through a series of light‑touch formats, including:
• Optional 1:1 peer connects based on shared challenges
• Curated conversation stations
• 'Find someone who' networking game where you grab a persona pin, swap sticks and stories, meet new people
The objective is to enable meaningful conversations and connections early in the day, setting the tone ahead of the formal programme.
• Build a resilient, high mix supply base for bespoke, low volume production, safeguarding quality, on time delivery, and brand defining craftsmanship while compressing lead times
• Orchestrate cross functional planning and “design to source” with early supplier involvement to accelerate innovation in materials, electrification, and lightweight technologies
• Elevate SRM from transactional to strategic, tier n visibility, joint scorecards, and shared risk assessment OEM+Tier-1 on supply chain, including potential joint mitigation measures (from “Emergency” Management to “Synergic mitigation approach”) to de risk constrained components and stabilize throughput amid volatility
Silvano Michieli, Chief Procurement Officer - Lamborghini
Moderator - Dawn Tiura, CEO - SIG
• Build a live shadow‑supplier programme that functions as an operational alternative — qualifying parallel sources, stress‑testing transition playbooks, and defining activation triggers so continuity risks are solved before primary suppliers fail
• Accelerate regional and dual‑sourcing decisions through a delivery‑assurance lens by stress‑testing logistics, capacity, regulatory exposure, and lead‑time volatility first — ensuring diversification reduces outage risk rather than reallocating it
• Redesign supplier portfolio risk governance by linking concentration thresholds, single‑point‑of‑failure risks, and contractual flexibility directly to sourcing strategy — so resilience is engineered into supply decisions, not managed reactively
Raj Jadhav, Chief Procurement Officer - W. L. Gore & Associates
Renee Michelli, Head of Logistics Procurement - Henkel
Maurcio Valadares, Global Strategic Sourcing Director - Baker Hughes
Moderator: Harold Nwariaku, Head of CIPS Americas - CIPS
• Accelerate time-to-contract by deploying AI agents that shortlist suppliers, run automated intake, and model negotiation scenarios, eliminating manual bottlenecks and moving sourcing initiatives from recommendation to execution faster while keeping human judgment in control.
• Close the ROI gap by building the business case for AI on measurable procurement outcomes, including cycle-time reduction, cost avoidance, and contract compliance improvements, rather than proof-of-concept demonstrations that never reach production.
• Strengthen procurement's strategic position by embedding AI into negotiations, contracting, and purchase order execution, ensuring sourcing insights translate into action and enabling teams to deliver faster, more defensible decisions across the procurement lifecycle.
Registration and breakfast open from 7:30am, followed by facilitated networking from 8:15–8:45am.
This session is designed to support efficient, high‑value peer connections through a series of light‑touch formats, including:
• Optional 1:1 peer connects based on shared challenges
• Curated conversation stations
• 'Find someone who' networking game where you grab a persona pin, swap sticks and stories, meet new people
The objective is to enable meaningful conversations and connections early in the day, setting the tone ahead of the formal programme.
Supplier Management Infrastructure: Building the Foundations for Performance, Compliance & Resilience
• Build a single, trusted view of your supply base by integrating onboarding, risk, performance, logistics, compliance and ESG data into one operating model, enabling faster decisions and reducing the time teams spend reconciling information across systems
• Move beyond governance-driven supplier management by creating structured collaboration programmes that drive innovation, continuous improvement and measurable value creation, while strengthening accountability across strategic supplier relationships
• Strengthen supplier performance and compliance by implementing transparent scorecards, clear KPIs and risk-monitoring frameworks that improve visibility across quality, delivery, regulatory requirements, shrinkage, cost and service outcomes
Sebastian Dori, Chief Procurement Officer - Phinia
Alison Jones, Chief Procurement Officer - Philips
Douglas Kent, Founder - SCIA
• Lead a bold procurement transformation by redesigning the operating model from the ground up, using insights gathered from stakeholders, suppliers, and internal teams to address structural misalignment and unlock greater value creation.
• Navigate the toughest decisions in organizational change, including reshaping teams, redefining roles, and building a culture aligned to the function's future ambitions rather than its historical ways of working.
• Secure executive buy-in for radical change by positioning procurement as a strategic business driver, earning a platform alongside the CEO and CFO to communicate the transformation vision across the organization and establish a path toward world-class performance.
Stephen Harrington, Chief Supply Chain Officer - MGM Resorts
Douglas Kent, Founder - SCIA
CPO 'Ask Me Anything': The Procurement Talent Equation: Skills, structure & scale in a volatile world
• Drive procurement talent strategy beyond reactive hiring by building structured capability frameworks that map hybrid skills, commercial, analytical, geopolitical, and digital, to the expanding decisions procurement is now expected to own across sourcing, risk, and data governance
• Strengthen the centre of excellence from coordination layer to capability engine, setting standards, developing talent, and extending procurement’s operating model beyond internal teams to include structured supplier enablement and training programmes that accelerate system adoption, data visibility, and collaboration at scale
• Transform AI from a threat narrative into a workforce multiplier by redesigning roles around what humans do best with AI support, while equipping procurement teams to onboard and train suppliers onto shared platforms, freeing professionals from transactional work and positioning the function as the organisation’s commercial intelligence core
Marcelo Stefani, Chief Procurement Officer - PepsiCo
Silvano Michieli, Chief Procurement Officer - Lamborghini
Alison Jones, Chief Procurement Officer - Philips
As procurement's influence expands beyond cost management into risk, resilience and enterprise value creation, leaders must rethink the capabilities needed to succeed. This interactive masterclass explores how procurement professionals can develop the skills required to thrive in a rapidly changing environment, strengthen negotiation strategies amid geopolitical and economic uncertainty, and harness AI to drive smarter decision-making and productivity. Participants will assess the critical competencies needed for future leadership, learn how top performers are creating value through modern supplier negotiations, and understand where AI can realistically enhance procurement outcomes today. Through practical frameworks, real-world examples and peer discussion, attendees will leave with a roadmap for personal and team development, a clearer understanding of how procurement's role is evolving, and actionable strategies to build stronger commercial influence, accelerate performance and position procurement as a strategic partner to the business.
