Christiane Schmidt
Global Director Supply Chain Excellence at Schülke & Mayr
Speaking at TFEST26: Tuesday, December 2 2026 at 14:30–15:00 on the Main Stage — “From Cost Centre to Growth Engine: Making the Commercial Case for Supply Chain”.
About Christiane
Christiane Schmidt is Global Director Supply Chain Excellence at Schülke & Mayr, the Hamburg-based infection prevention company, where she drives process maturity, agile transformation and continuous improvement across the end-to-end supply chain. She brings two decades of international experience spanning local, regional and global roles — most recently nearly six years at Kellanova as Market Customer Service & Logistics Director for Kellogg Northern Europe, and before that Demand Planning Manager Global Strategy at Colgate-Palmolive in New Jersey and DACH Customer Service & Logistics Manager for Hill's Pet Nutrition.
Her earlier career at Reckitt and British American Tobacco covered demand planning, customer service and supply chain project management across Germany, Italy and the UK. A certified Scrum Master and agile moderator, Christiane is a vocal advocate for people leadership and diversity in the profession, volunteering with the LEAD Network Supply Chain Chapter, and has spoken at TOC Europe in Rotterdam on bringing a commercial supply chain perspective to global trade.
Session Overview
Gartner's research is blunt: when CSCOs focus on cost control, their CEOs conclude the supply chain is not doing enough to support growth. This keynote makes the opposite case — that the supply chain is the most under-used commercial lever in the business, and that the leaders who win budget, board time and succession are the ones who can argue it in the language of revenue and margin rather than service levels and OTIF. A practical framework for translating operational capability into commercial value, and for making that case to a CEO.
About TFEST26
TFEST26 is Europe's most senior supply chain conference, taking place December 1–2 2026 at Colosseum Berlin. It brings together 400+ Director-level and above leaders — Chief Supply Chain Officers, VPs, and senior directors from Cisco, Henkel, Estée Lauder, Diageo, Schneider Electric, Novartis, Mars, and others — for two days of peer benchmarking, candid practitioner firesides, themed roundtables, and pre-scheduled 1:1 meetings.