EP 44 - Stanford Medicine's Amanda Chawla on the People-First Framework behind a 10-Year Transformation

Amanda Chawla, SVP - Chief Supply Chain & Post Acute Care Officer at Stanford Health Care, inherited a supply chain where half the organization was outsourced, basic functions like category management and master data management didn't exist, and clinical staff were calling daily about missing products. Nearly a decade later, Stanford's supply chain has earned department of the year recognition and top marks in Gartner's rankings. Amanda walks through the framework she used to get there and why she still considers the transformation unfinished.

Amanda also breaks down the four-committee governance structure she built around non-labor spend: indirect, medical, pharmaceutical, and a capital committee currently in development. Each is co-chaired by the business with supply chain as a supporting arm, and every senior VP and C-suite executive has a representative on a subcommittee. Amanda makes a case for redefining the chief supply chain officer role, arguing it should function more like a chief spend management officer. She connects that vision to how she built her team, including why she looked outside healthcare to write job descriptions and how she modeled a clinical dyad structure inside a non-clinical function.

Topics discussed:

• Building supply chain infrastructure from scratch including category management, master data management, and insourcing outsourced functions

• Applying a people-first transformation framework across leadership structure, technology, culture, infrastructure, and business processes

• Converting a non-labor spend program into an executive-level governance model embedded in organizational operating plans

• Structuring co-chaired spend committees across indirect, medical, pharmaceutical, and capital categories with C-suite subcommittees

• Redefining the chief supply chain officer as a chief spend management officer responsible for organization-wide financial strategy

• Modeling a clinical dyad structure inside a non-clinical supply chain function to align business partners and drive accountability

• Using quarterly business reviews with internal customers like HR and marketing to build trust and expand supply chain's strategic mandate

• Adopting a data-first, technology-as-enabler approach that links every metric to operational pillars and decision-making cadences