Navigating the future: Insights from Mondelez’s Cloris Zhang on sustainability and supply chain innovation
10 Oct 20246 min read
Summary
- Cloris Zhang, Senior VP at Mondelez, discussed the shift towards sustainable supply chains and the importance of developing internal talent with technical expertise and supply chain knowledge. She emphasized Mondelez’s approach of training employees from procurement and manufacturing backgrounds to manage emissions across different scopes.
- Zhang highlighted growing job opportunities in tech-driven sectors like digital data, supply network design, and change management, noting the demand for multi-skilled professionals who can merge data expertise with business insights to drive sustainability.
- She also touched on China’s evolving role in supply chains, shifting to a "Made in China for China" strategy. While successful in China, replicating this model in other regions is challenging due to differences in infrastructure and regulations.
0At the recently concluded Supply Chain Connect event in Singapore, Value Chain Asia had the chance to sit down with Cloris Zhang, Senior Vice President of Integrated Supply Chain AMEA at Mondelez, to discuss the shift towards sustainable supply chains and the evolving job landscape.Following her panel session on “Building Sustainable & Agile Supply Chains Through Innovation,” Zhang shared her insights on how managers can pivot to sustainability roles, emerging job opportunities in the industry, and China’s evolving role in supply chain collaboration.
Transitioning to sustainability roles
When asked how managers can transition into sustainability roles focusing on sustainable supply chains Zhang highlighted the diverse skill set required.
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“Sustainability roles contain different skills, including management of government and NGO relationships, understanding carbon emissions including definition of data with regards to collection and analysis to enable visibility and change management to work on people’s mindset.” she said.
To Zhang, technical expertise and an understanding of the end-to-end supply chain are important for those looking to advance in sustainable supply chains. She explained that Mondelez has found success developing talent from within, rather than hiring externally.
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“To illustrate, a team member managing Scope three would normally come with some procurement background whereas a team member managing Scope two and one would have some manufacturing background as they need to understand the equipment and the technology in relation to how the goods are produced,” she noted further.
Scope one, two and three are classifications of emissions a company produces. The first scope covers emissions that a company makes directly, while the second scope covers those made indirectly. For example, running vehicles and cooling buildings respectively. The third scope covers all emissions up and down its value chain, from resource extraction to manufacturing.
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