Part One--From Cookies to Careers: Removing Boundaries for the Next Generation of Supply Chain Talent

Will Heywood: 0:10

Welcome to"All Business. No Boundaries.", a collection of supply chain stories by DHL Supply Chain, the North American leader in contract logistics. I'm your host, Will Heywood. This is a place for in-depth discussions on the supply chain challenges keeping you up at night. We're breaking beyond the boundaries that are limiting your supply chain. Let's dive in. Today's episode is part one of"From Cookies to Careers: Removing Boundaries for the Next Generation of Supply Chain Talent" and my guests are Tammy Wharton, President and CEO, and Jessica Martin, Program Product Director, both of the Girl Scouts of Ohio Heartland Council. Also joining us is Tim Sprosty, Senior Vice President of Human Resources at DHL Supply Chain. Okay, thanks all for being here today. I'd like to start by just asking you to introduce yourselves starting with you, Tammy. What's your role at the Girl Scouts and how long have you been there? Just tell us a little bit about your experience there.

Tammy Wharton: 1:05

Great. Well Will, thanks for having me. I'm Tammy Wharton, President and CEO of Girl Scouts of Ohio's Heartland. We're one of 111 councils who serve the USA and we serve 30 counties in Ohio and we serve approximately 18,000 girls right here in Ohio. And what I do is I get to work with a lot of wonderful staff members, volunteers, and girls to provide leadership programming. And the areas that we focus on are STEM, the outdoors, entrepreneurship, which is that little known cookie program that we do, and life skills. So, skills that are going to help set girls up for success and also help with their future, whether that be in their careers or whatever they choose to do.

Will Heywood: 1:51

Super. And I'm going to come back to the cookie thing in just a second. Jessica, can you tell us about your role at the Girl Scouts?

Jessica Martin: 1:59

Yes. My name is Jessica Martin. I'm the Product Program Director. I've worked for Girl Scouts of Ohio's Heartland for about 10 years in various different roles with the product team. My role is to help support girls through their participation in learning about entrepreneurship through the cookie program. So, giving girls the opportunity to practice and learn skills such as goal-setting and money management through having the opportunity to reach customers with the cookie program, as well as having an opportunity to learn about those skills and earn rewards and help earn proceeds as well for their troop to do great and amazing adventures.

Will Heywood: 2:41

Great. Thank you. And lastly, Tim, tell us about you.

Tammy Wharton: 2:44

Thanks. Well, my name is Tim Sprosty, and I am the Senior Vice President of Human Resources for DHL Supply Chain here in North America. I've been with the organization about 20 years and am essentially responsible for traditional HR programs like comp and benefits, talent acquisition, talent development, but also very much in charge of and trying to promote employee engagement and the proper culture that helps define our responsiveness for our customers that we serve.

Will Heywood: 3:21

Excellent. Thank you. Tammy, back to the cookies. It's February, and I know that that's when a lot of the action happens in terms of the cookie drive. Can you give us some background on just what the program is in general, what its purpose has been in history, and how you as an organization think about the cookie drive or fundraiser in your sort of broader remit?

Tammy Wharton: 3:48

Sure. Well Will, you hit it on the head when you said about it being a program and while there's delicious cookies in every box of cookie, there's so much more that is involved. It's teaching girls skills. This whole program teaches girls skills like money management, business, ethics, goal setting, how to talk to customers. There's just so many skills that girls learn in this program. And to give you a little bit of an overview of what we're talking about, there are 111 councils in this country and the cookie program is a$900 million business. And every year we distributed over 200 million packages of cookies. I mean, let that sink in a little bit,$900 million business run by seven year olds predominantly. I mean, it's pretty incredible skills that they're learning. So, it's no doubt that these young ladies are going to be entrepreneurs in the future because they're learning the skills they need today. The first cookie sale, and correct me if I'm wrong, began in the 1920s. And that was because when we were trying to find funding for Girl Scouts, the banks wouldn't support Juliette Gordon Low, our founder, by providing loans. So, not only did she have to sell her pearls to get money, but she had to start something to help fundraise for the support of the programs back in the early 1920s. And when this was originated, the cookies were developed in the kitchens of the members. Whereas now we have two bakers, Little Brownie Bakers and ABC Bakers that provide all of the cookies from across the nation. And each council works with the bakers to select the baker by taking on bids and working on contracts each year with the bakers. So our baker is Little Brownie Baker, and we typically have about a three-year contract with them before we entertain additional contracts.

Will Heywood: 5:46

Interesting. And so, Jessica, maybe for you just on the process, and I want to get up to the cookie drop, which is, I think where our organizations start to cross. Walk us through a typical annual cycle for the cookie program.

Jessica Martin: 6:01

Yeah, so our cookie program starts off the month of January, typically each year, where girls are taking order card orders from customers. So, customers are requesting their favorite delicious packages, whichever their favorites are. The girls are writing those on their order card and tracking those. All orders are due towards the end of January as we prepare for cookies to actually come into a state of Ohio and actually hit the ground. Cookies hit the ground in the month of February. So we distribute cookies out to each of our troops and out to volunteers so they can distribute those out to individual families in Girl Scouts to then have them fulfill those orders out to customers. And during that same time, so towards the end of March and into February, girls will participate in what we call the booth phase or portion of our program. Obviously that's going to look a little bit different this year with the current pandemic, but girls will still have an opportunity to reach customers in creative ways to make sure we're not missing anybody and everyone has an opportunity to get their order filled.

Tammy Wharton: 7:10

And the cookie sale. I just want to add in here, the cookie sale with the girls, is the forward facing piece. The cookie program has planning and strategy that happens year round because we have to estimate how many cookies we're going to order each year, the varieties, we work with the bakers for different dates for distribution, which is something that is near and dear to all of your heart is the whole distribution chain.

Will Heywood: 7:37

Yes, indeed. And I want to talk about the cookie drop or the mega drop, I think is how it's also referred to. And Tim, maybe starting with you. How did DHL get involved with that activity with the Girl Scouts?

Tim Sprosty: 7:51

Well, as Tammy just mentioned, when you talk about$900 million business distributing 200 million packages, but then you do that in a very short, condensed period of time, that formula equals potentially a logistics nightmare or an opportunity really to fine tune the logistics and the distribution side of the house and that's really what DHL Supply Chain prides themselves in. So, as an organization, historically, we have a mission around connecting people and improving lives. And part of our strategic initiatives speaks to having a social responsibility and providing assistance in the communities where we work and live. And certainly within our strategic initiatives, we also talk about diversity and inclusion, and logistics historically has been a very male dominated industry. And we to look for talent across the board and our partnership with the Girl Scouts actually took us a little further upstream in trying to get the message out that the logistics industry is a great place for females to enhance their careers and/or find jobs that provide flexibility and/or the ability to transfer skills that they may have learned at a young age into an industry that continues to grow.

Will Heywood: 9:29

Great. So, the cookie drop event. Tammy or Jessica, can you just give us a thumbnail sketch of what that is and what it looks like?

Tammy Wharton: 9:38

Absolutely. And I'm going to jump onto what Tim said, you know, Girl Scouts is about getting female leaders into different positions, especially in fields that are often male dominated and are not represented by a lot of women. So, when we started having the conversation about getting involved with Girl Scouts in this mega delivery, where we as a council, send out a million cookies in three days, where we set semi-trucks up and our Girl Scout leaders and friends of Girl Scouts do drive throughs, where they pick up each of the cookies that they've ordered. And your teams have come and helped us with this mega delivery site to make sure that it was seamless and easy for them to get what they needed in the three-day span. And it was just so important to have volunteers and help to make sure that we were able to distribute that amount of cookies without a lot of difficulties. So it's a drive-through of where we put cases of cookies in individual's cars, and they just drive down lines that are lined by other semi-trucks with each variety and pick up their cookies each year.

Will Heywood: 10:55

Jessica, I participated in that last year and I was pretty blown away by the engineering that goes into the actual event. Can you talk a little bit about how some of the tools and processes that you've developed as an organization to make that go so efficiently?

Jessica Martin: 11:14

We've been doing the mega delivery for 10 plus years here at Girl Scouts of Ohio's Heartland. So, a number of years of trial and error have helped us to come and finally get to a great place and great flow with how the delivery works. When troops check in at the delivery, they have a color coded, we call it a bubble sheet that lists out the varieties of cookies that they'll be picking up by case that day. And that really helps to make the process seamless. When they check in, everything's color-coded and clear on that sheet. That lets the volunteer, as well as the delivery workers that are loading the vehicle clearly see how many cases that are being loaded into each volunteer's vehicle and utilizing that they're able, again, to seamlessly drive through the lane, stop at each open bay or trailer and get cookies loaded. It is still their responsibility to make sure they stop and they're counting the cases as they're getting loaded in. But we've really worked with the process over the past few years in partnership with our delivery agent and volunteers to make sure that it's again seamless throughout the entire time while they're there.

Will Heywood: 12:27

Thank you. And I was blown away by folks who were running U-Hauls and cubing out their vehicles online beforehand to understand how many cases can fit in each type of car. It's really pretty impressive.

Jessica Martin: 12:42

Yeah. Yeah. That's a really good point. So we do provide that guidance for our troops in regards to how many cases fit in. So that way they can adequately bring enough vehicles. And over the years we've seen some interesting vehicles, whether it be U-Haul trucks, we have seen food trucks that have come through from people that own their own business and even limousines that have been loaded with cookies. So our volunteers get very, very creative and always love coming out. It's quite a big thing to see when you pull in and you see 40 semis in that large parking lot, but we're happy that we've made it a very smooth process for them to get in and out, and we can easily get cookies out to around a thousand troops each program.

Will Heywood: 13:24

Yeah. And it's a lot of fun on top of all that. Jessica, if I want to buy girl scout cookies, where do I go?

Jessica Martin: 13:32

Yes. Well, customers can find cookies by going to our website at G-S-O-H, that stands for girl Scouts of Ohio's Heartland,.org/findcookies. On our website, customers will be able to search by zip code and find cookie booths near them. If they want to go in person to purchase their girl scout cookies, or if they're looking for a more virtual format of way to purchase cookies through a girl's digital cookie site, they can search there on that site for true digital links and support a troop near them. Through that site, they can purchase those cookies and have them shipped directly to their doorstep.

Will Heywood: 14:13

If you enjoyed the conversation today, I have good news for you: there's more. Please tune in for part two on March 8th. Also share this episode with a friend and rate us on Apple Podcasts. You can find us online at dhl.com/allbusinessnoboundaries and follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter@DHLSupplyChain. We'll see you next time.