Top 10 Procurement Leaders to Follow in 2024

Right now, efficiency and profitability are heavily prioritized as budgets and spend come under increasing scrutiny. Procurement is the unsung hero that helps businesses do more with less.

Keeping your finger on the pulse of industry trends and best practices is critical to delivering maximum business value. In fact, many veteran practitioners are constantly sharing valuable insights on procurement and negotiation. 

We’ve curated a list of 10 procurement leaders to follow in 2024. Their content will help you drive more bottom-line impact, spanning topics like negotiation mistakes, KPIs, and leveraging AI.

Chandhrika Venkataraman

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Chandhrika Venkataraman brings over 18 years of global supply chain experience. In the last couple of years, she founded Source Refresh, a strategic sourcing and procurement advisory firm consulting minority-owned businesses and small to mid-market companies.

Chandhrika is also the host of the Source Refresh Podcast, where she interviews procurement experts to gain insight into supply chain trends, challenges, and solutions. She frequently shares tips to drive procurement performance and insight into the space on LinkedIn, showcasing its value to businesses. Check out her post on the Skills Needed in Indirect versus Direct Procurement or her satire on Three Negotiation Mistakes to Avoid.

Daniel Barnes

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Leading the charge in changing procurement’s perception, Daniel Barnes is a long-time procurement content creator. He is the Founder and Managing Director of World of Procurement, a content community for procurement, supply chain, and contract management professionals to enhance their growth and knowledge.

World of Procurement features educational procurement content via podcasts and the Procurement Legends newsletter. His LinkedIn also features a bevy of insightful posts educating those about the function: Procurement Perception, Terms to Know, Vendor Performance KPIs, and more.

Michael Shields

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With a wealth of expertise that spans over 15 years, Michael Shields is at the forefront of elevating procurement’s value. After beginning his career at Honeywell, he established the procurement function at Qualtrics and then led the department at MX. He is now the Head of Procurement and Strategy at Tropic, where he leads the procurement function for a procurement company, helps scale our commercial executive team, coaches customers with best practices, and guides our product roadmap.

Michael continues to advise tech companies and was also a professor of operations and global supply chain management at Brigham Young University. You can bet he uses this background as an educator to teach others about the value of negotiation and procurement on LinkedIn. Check out some of his recent posts about Procurement Foundations, Driving Procurement Excellence, and 4 Ways Good Procurement Platforms Supercharge Teams.

Mary Ruth Williamson

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Mary Ruth Williamson holds over two decades of supply chain and procurement experience across the automotive, medical, biotechnology, and capital equipment industries. She is currently a Managing Partner at SourcingIQ, where she helps companies find ways to reduce costs, improve internal sourcing and procurement processes, and train team members on sourcing strategies and best practices. 

On LinkedIn, Mary’s comment sections on her posts are often filled with valuable insight from leaders in the space. Not only does she post her tips and advice (like this one on Project Management Skills in Procurement), but she often sparks meaningful dialogue about the industry by asking questions like “What Would You Like Procurement to Stop Doing?” or “How Do We Bridge the Talent Crisis Gap in Procurement?”.

Tom Mills

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As the current Head of Procurement & Properties at Bibby Financial Services, Tom Mills brings over two decades of experience as a seasoned procurement leader. It’s like he poured all of his experience and knowledge into his LinkedIn content and Procurement Bites newsletter.

Simplifying procurement is his goal. Over 6,900 people read his newsletter, containing content like Negotiation Tips and his recorded speech about AI in Finance and Procurement. On LinkedIn, you’ll find him posting cheatsheets or guides like Spend Classification and Analysis, List of Procurement Acronyms, and Contract Mistakes to Avoid. 

Anna McGovern

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With 33 years of experience in the industry, Anna McGovern is a veteran procurement leader, even labeling herself as an enthusiast. As the Founder and Managing Director at Pondview Consulting, she supports C-Suite, procurement, and supply chain leaders around strategic procurement strategy planning and execution, sourcing, inventory management, and more.

She enjoys posting and curating helpful resources and insights about the space on LinkedIn, like Mckinsey’s Ten CPO Actions to Defy the Toughest Challenges, and the Supply Chain Evangelist newsletter, including Filling the Talent and Skills Gap in Procurement. 

Joël Collin-Demers

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Dubbing himself as “Your Digital Procurement Mentor,” Joël Collin-Demers writes about how top Procurement teams operate and leverage technology, sharing insight on how others can follow suit. His knowledge stems from his consulting experience overseeing and implementing procurement processes at IBM and Pure Procurement. 

Joël’s LinkedIn feed features nuggets of valuable procurement insight, including How to Tame Tail Spend and Total Cost of Ownership. He dives deeper into these topics and more on The Pure Procurement Newsletter with articles and guides, such as this one on How to Manage your Procurement Business Processes.

Laura Sellers

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If you need a leadership and career coach to become a better procurement leader and thinker, Laura Sellers is your person. She has parlayed over 10 years of experience in international leadership roles at Procurement & Supply Chain businesses to support the growth of procurement leaders and teams as an accredited Executive and Leadership coach.

She frequently shares introspective advice on LinkedIn, such as this one on reflection and successes in procurement, and through her newsletter. It’s her goal to help those in the space increase their confidence, resilience, and agility to navigate current challenges and deliver more value to procurement.

Rich Sains

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Rich Sains is helping companies transform their IT and Procurement functions as a managing consultant at Acada. Even more, he is helping procurement professionals learn how to make more of an impact on their companies and careers through his Procurement Weekly newsletter and Procurement Conversation podcast. 

14,000 readers read his newsletters every week to get, as he says, “actionable steps to increase procurement's impact.” Recent topics have included Selling the Value of Procurement and 9 Procurement Priorities for 2024. On the flip side, he has also interviewed some of the top procurement minds on his podcast, including two names on our list: Joël Collin-Demers and Tom Mills. Not to mention, his LinkedIn posts also contain valuable nuggets, such as this one on the Skill of Silence.

Shane Ray Martin

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Shane Ray Martin is currently working at the intersection of negotiation and AI for founders, sales executives, and procurement professionals. He has interviewed over 50 negotiation experts as the host of the Deal Talk podcast, giving listeners actionable negotiation tips. Experts interviewed have included Mark Raffan (Author of 9 Secrets to Win Deals) and Melissa Fortunato (Former FBI Hostage Negotiator).

Shane’s LinkedIn is full of negotiation tips and advice. Check out some of Shane’s procurement negotiation-focused content such as his LinkedIn Live event Scaling Procurement with AI featuring Michael Van Keulan (CPO at Coupa) and his Deal Talk interview 9 Secrets to Procurement Value Creation with 3 Global Experts featuring Chandhrika Venkataraman and other procurement leaders.