BY MICHAEL POWER
JEFF RUSSELL CHARTS A PATH FROM HOCKEY RINK TO BOARDROOM The ways in which people get started in supply chain are as varied as those who work in the field. For Jeff Russell, that path was by way of a hockey rink and small-town Ontario. “My original dream was to play pro hockey in the 80s,” says Russell, now corporate purchasing manager for Miller Waste Systems Inc. in Markham, Ontario. “It didn’t work out, so I fell into purchasing by accident and it’s just been one steady thing after another.” At one point, Russell also dreamed of enrolling in the Norman Patterson School of International Affairs at Ottawa’s Carlton University. By that time his ambition had shifted from hockey to working in global affairs. But the program allows 25 to enroll each year, and during the admission process Russell placed 26th. “It was a small class and that was it,” he says. “So, I was left going, ‘what do I do now?’” But Russell’s options were hardly limited. By that time, he had received a business accounting diploma from Algonquin College of Applied Arts and Technology and a BA in Law-Sociology, along with an Honours in sociology, from Ottawa’s Carlton University. Russell was born in Shawville, Quebec but grew up in the small, Northern Ontario mining 10 OCTOBER 2020
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town of Ear Falls, about a five-and-a-halfhour drive northwest of Thunder Bay. His father worked in several mines in the area, including an iron ore mine for almost 15 years. Russell says that he grew up around the mining industry. “I left (Ear Falls) to play hockey but if you talk to my parents they’ll tell you that I left to go to school,” Russell says. “My dad, being in the mining industry, was quite big on getting an education as opposed to playing pro hockey. I did chase the dream, and that was what I wanted to do and up until I turned 19, that’s what I did. I played hockey and tried to make a go of it and then called it quits.” Russell had worked as an accounts payable clerk before attending Carlton and so was able to use his prior experience to land a role as a purchaser at Nellcor Puritan Benett (Meville) Ltd. in Ottawa. He became a buyer at Pratt & Whitney Canada in Mississauga in 1998 before taking on another buyer role at ABC Technologies the following year. He eventually moved on to become first a buyer-planner then a strategic sourcing specialist at Honeywell before then landing the role of procurement director at Crane Supply, a distributor of pipe,
DAILY ROUTINE These days, a typical day for Russell starts with reviewing key performance indicators (KPIs) along with scanning the news for changes in global markets that may impact future costs on critical items like foreign exchange rates or scrap metal costs. Global raw material is tied to the US dollar, so understanding its future impact on imported products in Canada is very important, he notes. SUPPLY PROFESSIONAL
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PHOTO: JOEL ROBERTSON PHOTOGRAPHY
A GLOBAL PERSPECTIVE
valves and fittings. Since then he has worked as procurement director, carbon, at Samuel, Son Co, purchasing manager at both Curtiss-Wright Corporation and ABS Machining, before getting his current role at Miller Waste Systems last April. Along the way, he also received his Certified Procurement Professional (CCP) designation from the Purchasing Management Association of Canada (PMAC) in 1999 and the Certified Purchasing Manager (CPM) designation in 2002 from the Institute of Supply Management and the Certified Supply Chain Management Professional (CSCMP) designation from Supply Chain Canada (formerly PMAC) in 2009. He has been a member of the Chartered Institute of Purchasing and Supply since 2011 and, in 2016, was invited to join the International Federation of Purchasing and Supply Management, which grants the IFPSM accreditation. He has gotten background training related to Canada Customs from the Canadian Society of Customs Brokers and has received his Green Belt certification in Six Sigma. While he has trained as a Black Belt he is not yet certified, and has also taken the Design for Six Sigma (DFSS) training in lean management for design but is not yet certified. After all his training and experience, Russell is quite happy to now work in the supply chain field, despite earlier ambitions in both pro hockey and international affairs. “In hindsight, with the amount of international business I’ve done, I’m almost in that role, just not doing it for the government,” he says.
