Tina Richards
Senior Vice President, Chief Procurement Officer, Science Applications International Corp.
As chief procurement officer, Tina Richards is focused on raising the business acumen of her team to enable growth and knowledge-based decisiveness.
To do so, her team developed a nine-week business acumen cohort focusing on functional, organizational, market and global perspectives for about 30 procurement leaders and analysts. They leveraged talented leaders and practitioners across SAIC and outside firms as speakers.
“There was often robust and engaging dialogue with the speakers as well as active ‘chat’ in the platform as we were all learning and growing together,” Richards said. “We covered multiple topics to ignite the intellectual curiosity that cultivates better business partners — from cybersecurity to digital transformation and from corporate strategy to business development. With knowledge comes the ability to take calculated risks and make sound business decisions and finding a path to ‘yes.'”
After completion, Richards surveyed the participants and received valuable feedback to make the next cohort even better. They will be working with other functions to launch an integrated cohort based on the success of this model.
“Take care of our employees, connect them to the mission and each other,” she said. “We have to get the people part right, and the rest will happen.”
Why Watch
In 2022, Richards and her team are heavily focused on sustained employee engagement, supply chain risk, procurement sustainability and supplier diversity.
“I am excited about the fresh creativity and agility demonstrated by Tina and SAIC’s supply chain team,” said Michael LaRouche, president of SAIC’s national security and space sector. “While maintaining compliance requirements, our supply chain team is implementing better ways to accelerate mission outcome for our customers.”