Deborah Ellis

Deborah Ellis has had a distinguished career in the supply chain and logistics arena. For more than twenty years she has consulted with companies aiming to lift their operational performance and re-position their supply chain strategy. She has led projects in Europe, USA, China, India and South America, as well as in her home base of Australia, for leading companies including Schneider Electric, Cochlear, Shell, Ralph Lauren, DHL and Unilever. She has also been engaged on high-impact, industry-level supply chain projects in agriculture, mining, cash distribution and fashion.

Deborah has contributed chapters and articles on strategic supply chain topics including: the future role of the supply chain, network design, humanitarian logistics, blockchain, reverse logistics, and has presented at international conferences on a range of supply chain-related subjects. A particular focus has been designing market-focused supply chains that are tailored to a range of different customer needs and expectations, and deliver a service and cost equation appropriate to each segment.

On this topic she has collaborated extensively with Dr John Gattorna, and contributed to the development of the highly influential Dynamic Alignment™ framework. Together they have authored Transforming Supply Chains (realign your business to better serve customers in a digital world), released in July 2019, which extends this important framework into the digital age.

Earlier in her career Deborah held operational roles in logistics with the Swire Group and Mars. Her academic background is in Economics. She lives in Sydney, Australia with her patient husband, and has three wonderful sons.