Gabie Mahlmann Selected to Receive 2023 MSCTL Outstanding Student Scholarship
Gabie Mahlmann
Senior Supply Chain Program Manager, Amazon
The University of Washington Master of Supply Chain Transportation & Logistics program (MSCTL) has selected first-year student Gabie Mahlmann as the recipient of the $10,000 Supply Chain Transportation & Logistics Outstanding Student Scholarship for 2023.
Mahlmann earned her undergraduate degree in marketing with a minor in tourism, hospitality and event management from the Kelley School of Business at Indiana University. She relocated to Seattle to begin her career at Amazon in vendor management, where she executed brand events and on-site marketing projects.
Gabie then moved into a role for one of Amazon’s furniture retail business lines, managing import strategies and growing dropship programs during the pandemic. When her work expanded to include predicting customer demand and just-in-time buying strategies, Gabie says she was hooked on solving supply chain challenges.
“I learned about the challenges of shipping heavy or bulky items, and became familiar with dropship and the advantages for items like rugs or multi-box items, which don’t always lend themselves to the typical warehouse operations,” she says.
Most recently, Gabie’s role as a senior supply chain program manager at Amazon took her to Sydney, Australia, where she spent six months working with retail and buying teams. With the encouragement of her managers, Gabie decided to pursue a master’s degree to build on her experience with new knowledge she could apply in her day-to-day work.
“I’m more engaged in work when I'm also learning,” Gabie says. “With my managers’ feedback on their master’s experiences and how they’ve seen higher education play a role in leadership decisions, it solidified that if I had the opportunity, I should go for it.”
How did you decide to apply to the University of Washington Supply Chain Transportation & Logistics master's degree program?
Pre-pandemic, I was considering getting an MBA, and UW was one of my top choices as I wanted to stay closer to home. After continuing to hone in on my interest in supply chain, I decided to opt for a more specialized program. I first looked at the in-person Supply Chain master’s program at UW before choosing MSCTL for the focus on logistics and transportation and home within the College of Engineering. My Lean Six Sigma course was also online, and I appreciated the flexibility to be able to travel while still having professors I could talk to, so I was open to a hybrid or fully online structure.
What are you looking forward to over the next two years?
I took a Lean Six Sigma course in 2021, and I really enjoyed the spectrum of perspectives in the class and the real-life applications everyone was able to bring to the virtual program. I’m hoping to get a similar experience with the Master’s in Supply Chain Transportation & Logistics program, and have the chance to build relationships within the industry. Personally, my partner will be in school as well, and I’m expecting more than a few coffee and study dates in our household.
What do you like about working in this industry?
Whether you’re implementing a process change or physical change, it can be so rewarding to watch the fruits of your labor go into place in real time and see a direct correlation between your efforts and the target KPI. In my current realm, being able to associate an improvement I’ve driven in damage rate and the end-customer’s experience opening the package adds a personal touch to the work, and helps me visualize the work needed to achieve the KPI target.
Who influenced your career path?
My parents first set me on my path by encouraging me to pursue a business degree along with my interests in event management, and even helped me move 2,000 miles away to Seattle. At Amazon, the projects my managers have assigned me allowed me to work with teams from pre-order trade compliance to heavy-bulky customer delivery operations and dig into the inner workings of their systems. The ability to learn from these teams and find out, even from a retail standpoint, how I can improve a supply chain process that impacts millions of customers is exciting. Without managers who listened to those interests and saw how they motivated me, I would no doubt be embarking on a different path.
What do you hope to do after you graduate?
I’m very interested in freight efficiency; whether that be in container utilization, planning trucking lanes, or finding ways to share capacity, and I want to move into an organization specifically focused on that goal after graduation. Whether it be on the strategy or execution side, there are so many companies using machine learning (ML) and real-time data to optimize shipping to be more sustainable or cost-effective, depending on your goal. I’d like to help build that space.
Congratulations to Gabie and our other scholarship recipients! Visit the Academic Experience page to learn more about this degree program, designed for working professionals. Plus, check out more about advancing your career in supply chain transportation and logistics.
