Welcome to ISM Orange County
Message from the President
Welcome to fiscal year 2012-2013. This is our first official start as ISM-OC. I’m so looking forward to being the first official President of ISM-OC. The theme for my Presidency is “Rebuild ISM-OC”.
This will be a challenging year for us. The Board has been diligently reducing costs over the past few years as much as possible to keep the association afloat. At the current rate and if we don’t get any new members and don’t have any fundraising events, the affiliate will run out of money in 3+ years.
The first item of business for “Rebuild ISM-OC” is all the committees will be working together at getting new members to join ISM-OC. The Marketing committee has designed a brochure that will be emailed to prospective members working in Orange County. The Communications committee will be setting up a Facebook account. They also will be updating the LinkedIn account for ISM-OC instead of NAPM-OC. We are looking for members to join the membership committee and someone to manage that committee. Educational Resources will continue to get great speakers with exciting topics.
The second item of business and most important is the lack of volunteers to run for the board of directors. As the board has been looking over all areas of reducing costs for the affiliation survival, one thing we overlooked was our volunteers. We realized this past year that everyone on the board has served their maximum two consecutive terms. We currently do not have a President Elect. We have one new board member, Abel Garcia, and we are so excited to have him be a part of the board. However, one new board member can’t carry the affiliate. We need people to volunteer so we can mentor and they can grow and take over committee chairs and join the board of directors. The Administration committee works very hard at recruiting new volunteers.
Come next March-April time frame, if we don’t have people willing to run for the board of directors, someone willing to take on the position of President for 2013-2014 and continue the leadership of ISM-OC, there will be no Affiliate to manage and we will cease to exist.
The Board of Directors for 2012-2013 looks to you, our members, to consider volunteering and getting involved.
Help us in “Rebuilding ISM-OC”.
Spotlight on a Member
Our spotlight is on Raja Bheema
Raja is a Sourcing Manager at Covidien Neuro, Vascular division in Irvine. He’s responsible for Indirect spend and 50% of the Direct spend. His primary duties include negotiating prices and contracts with suppliers, developing sourcing strategies and mitigating supply risk.
Raja has been with Covidien Neuro for two years. This division designs and manufactures neuro vascular products used for the treatment of stroke and aneurysms.
Raja has an MS in Industrial Engineering from Kansas State University and an MBA from Ross School of Business, University of Michigan. He also has the C.P.M. and CPSM designations from ISM.
He has been in the Supply Management field for 10 Years. He previously worked in the automotive industry as a Supplier Quality Engineer. He was exposed to different types of suppliers on a variety of issues. As he interacted with the Purchasing Department he became interested in Supply Management and jumped the fence.
Raja likes the ever-changing landscape in Supply Management ranging from effects of the tsunami in Japan, currency fluctuations, gold price changes and suppliers being uncooperative. There’s never a dull moment. He says “The minute you think you have things under control, the phone rings and by the end of that call you are saying ‘Holy Smokes!’”
The most interesting contract he has been involved with was the negotiation and agreement with a sole sourced supplier, who was on the verge of filing bankruptcy. The project went well after all. Raja’s team put all the required documents, including patents, in escrow in order for Covidien Neuro to have access if the supplier filed bankruptcy.
Raja has been a member of ISM/NAPM-OC for 1½ years. Prior to that, he was member of NAPM-Minneapolis for four years. He is a volunteer on the Educational Resource Committee and enjoys finding good speakers and topics that our members would find interesting and useful. He enjoys his team and that makes it fun!
Raja has been married for eight years to his lovely wife, Sujatha, who is threatening him by saying she wants two dogs. He’s still negotiating. He says he can’t imagine taking the dogs for a morning walk. He has a hard enough time getting to work)
They do agree about travel. They have vet been lucky enough to visit 20 countries so far. He also likes running. He says that he’s not a serious runner. He just does it for fun. His ultimate goal is to retire and work on his PhD while sitting on the beach. He’s still working on the topic.
Raja attends ISM-OC monthly dinner meetings and you can too. Just check out our schedule for upcoming events.
To view this month's President's Message & Member Spotlight click on the PDF link below.
Click here to download PDF.
