For the next instalment of my Q&A sessions with female leaders in SC Operations I was thrilled to catch up with Susanne Van Iersel at Sunrise. I have known Susanne for many years and seen her career journey evolve, taking on new locations and areas of responsibility so it was great to find out more about how it began and dig deeper in to some of the lessons she learnt along the way. It was a very interesting chat and I hope you enjoy reading as much as we enjoyed discussing it!
What inspired you to pursue a career in Supply Chain — particularly your technical specialism?
My interest goes back to my teenage years. My father was a kidney patient who received at-home dialysis, and every week a van from Baxter, a medical products company, would deliver the fluid bags he needed. The drivers became trusted partners to our family — they taught me and my siblings how to help my father in an emergency, and they even timed deliveries around our family holidays. That level of care and efficient, well-run operations behind the scenes left a deep impression on a 13- or 14-year-old who already loved mathematics and technical subjects.
I channelled that interest into chemical engineering — I was one of only six women in a class of around 115 — and graduated as, in my own words, “a process technologist, a reactor engineer and a quantum physicist for a part.” But I knew quickly I didn’t want a career sitting behind a computer; I wanted to see the end-to-end process. My first job was, unexpectedly, sales manager in a small business unit, where I ended up covering everything from negotiating contracts and bookings to customer orders to transport when colleagues were away. That taught me how an end-to-end business really works, and it was there I realised operations and supply chain — though I didn’t have a name for it yet — was what I loved. A later role developing software for a Shell manufacturing unit led Shell to bring me in-house to run operations for that same unit, and from there my supply chain career took off.
What advice would you give to any young women considering a career in Supply Chain?
“Dream big” is my first piece of advice. I’d warn against what I call opportunity-based career planning — limiting your ambitions to whatever next step happens to be visible inside your current company. Instead, picture where you want to be in 10–15 years, even if that goal feels almost too big to say out loud, and then work backwards. I describe career progression less as a pyramid and more as a Christmas tree — sometimes you need to go wide, not just up — and opening yourself to roles you might not have considered increases your market value and your odds of getting where you want to go.
My second piece of advice is a reality check: supply chain isn’t necessarily the field for people who want quick seniority, titles or constant recognition. Even in junior roles you carry significant accountability, you’re frequently negotiating with people more senior than you with little support, and the expectation is near-perfection. It suits people who enjoy an endless, complex puzzle — not only those chasing a fast-tracked, high-visibility career.
Where do you see the industry going in five years, and what skills do you consider will be most important then?
I’ve long been struck by how few large multinationals have true end-to-end, financially optimised value chain management, even with today’s technology — something Shell had already achieved decades ago without modern digital tools. Still with all developments in machine learning and AI, supply chain management is mostly still done in a similar fashion as 20 years ago, without rethinking how we work.
I believe AI will continue to get much better, much faster, at decision-making and network optimisation, which raises the stakes: if you don’t keep asking “why are we doing this — for the customer or for the value of the company?” you risk being left behind.
I’m optimistic but realistic about AI’s impact on leadership. I see real risk in leaders losing their own critical, challenging instincts if they defer too readily to AI output — but equally I see great value in using AI as a sparring partner, pushing it as hard as I’d push my own team in a conversation. For me, the skill that will matter most in five years isn’t using AI itself, but staying critical: continuing to ask why, questioning assumptions, and treating AI as a collaborator to be challenged rather than a threat or an oracle.
Were you offered support/mentorship as a woman in this space — and what impact did it have on you?
I’ll be honest, formal mentoring didn’t make much difference to me personally — I was often told I wasn’t senior enough to warrant a mentor, or paired with mentors too far removed from my own experience to relate to. What did change my trajectory were a handful of leaders I happened to work for. One, at Kraft Heinz, asked me directly whether I wanted to be a CEO one day. I didn’t have an answer — and when I eventually said I wasn’t sure I could, his response was simply, “why not?” That question reframed how I thought about my entire career.
The mentoring relationship that’s had the biggest impact on me as a woman specifically has been more recent: a mentor within my own company, one or two levels below me, who helped me build my personal branding and get comfortable with networking with purpose and putting myself forward, trusting I have interesting stories and experiences to share — something I’d always avoided because I felt I was imposing on people’s time or my message was not inspiring or significant enough. Today I pay that forward, mentoring five to ten people at any given time, both women and men, which also keeps me honest about following my own advice about dreaming big and owning your career.
Have you noticed a shift in how companies support women in supply chain? What still needs to change?
I see real progress in workplace safety more broadly: it’s now far more normal and accepted to report bullying or unacceptable behaviour through confidential channels, something that simply wasn’t the case earlier in my career. I’d also point to leadership commitments like my own CEO’s rule that the final two candidates for any senior role must include one man and one woman, with the best person winning — a sign, to me, of genuine commitment rather than box-ticking.
What still needs to change, in my view, is how much companies look outside for talent instead of properly investing in the people they already have. I believe organisations too often assume they lack the right skills internally, when in reality they rarely look at their people beyond their current job title. Women returning from parental leave are a good example — they’re often restarted at a lower level despite retaining all their prior experience. If employers looked more at people’s underlying passions and past achievements — not just their most recent role — I believe 10–20% more people internally, including more women and other under-represented groups, would get the opportunities they deserve.
What barriers, if any, have you faced as a woman in the industry? How did you push through them?
I’ve faced everything from professors telling women in the 1990s to keep quiet while attending college, to working on-site in oil and chemical plants with no changing rooms or bathrooms for women — the best on offer was often the accessible bathroom, which “slightly feels different.” The biggest, longest-running barrier for me has been bias tied to childbearing age — something that follows women roughly from age 26 to 35, which is why I started opening interviews myself by stating plainly that I didn’t want children, just to be considered on equal footing.
International relocation was another major, invisible burden: while many senior male colleagues had a partner managing the practicalities of a move, I had to set up an entire new life — housing, utilities, everything — on top of starting a demanding new role. I’ve also been repeatedly mistaken for a secretary, and had my passport handed to a male subordinate while travelling in the Middle East rather than to me.
I pushed through with a mix of resilience and defiance — an attitude I trace back to a school teacher who laughed when I said I wanted to study chemistry. “Tell me I can’t, and I’ll prove you wrong” became a lasting driving force for me. Practically, that meant developing thick skin — not accepting bias, but not letting it derail me either — and, over time, becoming much more selective about who I chose to work for, prioritising leaders and companies that genuinely valued me rather than simply needed me.
Personally, what do you think companies could do to attract more women into technical functions of the supply chain?
My own hiring philosophy points to part of the answer: build teams around skills, attitude and life experience rather than demographic targets, and a genuinely diverse, technically strong team follows naturally. My operations team — spanning procurement, supply chain and facility management — is roughly 50/50, and I achieved that without ever promoting anyone specifically for their gender, in a field that typically struggles to find women in the candidate pool at all.
Beyond hiring, I’d point to the deeper issue of trust and scope. When I chose Sunrise, what mattered most to me was a role with real scope to make an impact and genuine freedom to do the job my way, rather than a leader who simply needed my output. A manager that trusts you to own your responsibilities, supports when needed and challenges you to be your best, is the best setup you can get.
I also believe companies that let people — including women returning from career breaks or moving in from adjacent fields — own meaningful, technical problems, rather than gatekeeping those roles behind narrow prior experience, will naturally attract more women into them.
Is there a stereotype about women in technical/operations roles that you would like to break?
Two stand out for me. The first is the assumption that a senior woman in a technical or operations setting is support staff rather than the person in charge — this shows in subtle things, the dinner bill handed to the most senior looking male, introductions following male seniority order, the expectation that you will take notes or arrange coffee.
The second is the idea that women, including me at one point, aren’t strong negotiators. I used to describe myself that way — until I realised what I’d mistaken for weakness was actually an instinct for win-win outcomes and long-term partnership over squeezing out the last percentage point of a deal, which I now see as a real strength rather than a shortcoming. I’ll also say plainly that when diversity quotas are involved, women can be left second-guessing whether they got a role on merit — that doubt is real, unfair, and worth naming rather than pretending it isn’t there.
Are there unique strengths that women can bring to Supply Chain that go under-recognised?
I’m careful not to over-generalise, but I think common stereotypes often hold a kernel of truth. The women on my team — half of my procurement, supply chain and facility management function is female — consistently excel at multitasking, interpersonal communication, and building resilient working relationships that can absorb setbacks. I’d also highlight strong self-sufficiency and creative, out-of-the-box problem-solving. These aren’t exclusively female traits, but as a group, I see women disproportionately strong in these areas.
What does true inclusion mean to you?
For me, true inclusion is the point at which gender, skin colour, neurodiversity and other differences stop being things you have to actively talk about, because everyone already feels they have a place at the table. I’ve worked with neurodivergent team members — people with ADHD, OCD or autism — by reframing their conditions as “superpowers,” taking a slow, individually-led approach to how much someone wants to share, and helping the wider team understand how best to work together.
My simplest test of inclusion: when someone on my team reports in sick, my first response is “go home, get better — we need you back, but we need you well.” For me, that captures the underlying idea — recognising people as people, not just as output, and reaching a point where diversity and inclusion no longer need to be a special topic of conversation at all.
Are there any communities or networks you’d point other women in supply chain toward?
I’d point people toward LEAD Network in Europe and AWESOME (Achieving Women's Excellence in Supply Chain Operations, Management and Education) in the US — both are well-regarded, established networks for women in the industry — though I’d note these tend to add the most value at particular career stages, and by the time I encountered them my own personal network had already outgrown what they could offer.
My broader point is that women often underinvest in networking generally, focusing on the absence of an “old girls’ network” rather than simply building their own. I credit my current mentor with helping me get comfortable putting myself forward and reaching out to build connections proactively, something I’d previously avoided because I felt I was imposing on people’s time. I’ve found I personally prefer small, intimate gatherings over large conferences, and I’d encourage others to find the format that works for them rather than assuming networking has to look a particular way.