2022 Star Women in Grocery winner Joumana Sida (Q&A)
Joumana Sida
Director of Forecasting & Replenishment
Sobeys
How did you get into the grocery business?
I started out in grocery wholesale procurement and quickly developed a passion for supply chain. From there, I entered the retail world where customer satisfaction became a professional obsession for me to meet and exceed every day. I joined Sobeys in 2019 and was privileged to be tasked with building the procurement and replenishment function for Voilà.
What are some of your greatest career achievements?
Throughout my career, I established different new business units and built new teams. Efficiency and improvement optimization has been a repeated achievement throughout my career, increasing fulfillment rates, shelf availability and reducing food waste and procurement costs. Thanks to the freshness guarantee policy I established for Voilà, the cherry on the top of my achievements so far is winning Voilà customer confidence in the quality of fresh food we pick on their behalf and deliver to their doorsteps.
What is your best quality?
When my head is in the cloud of aspiration, my feet don’t leave the ground of reality. In other words, while I’m envisioning big strategic goals, I don’t lose sight of important details that can take the business there.
What is your leadership style?
I am always either ahead of the team paving the way, setting goals and correcting the course or behind them pushing, challenging and supporting. Respecting the space each individual needs to experiment, make errors and learn is very important for me to build stronger teams.
How do you promote diversity and inclusion in the workplace?
A team with different schools of thoughts, backgrounds and levels of experience is a team that can produce a final product that satisfies a much higher number of customers. This means going beyond gender, age or skin colour to recognize strengths, values and unique qualities of every human being. Different ethnic backgrounds bring a diverse cultural perspective that is so important for retailers. A balanced gender presence on my leadership team complements the best traits of both, to optimize the team’s efficiency. I seek the best talent so they can drive the business. Thus, it only makes sense that everyone on my team has a voice in the way we do things based on their perspective and experience.
What do you like to do outside of work?
I enjoy indoor gardening, baking and reading world literature. Long road trips take my mind off daily rush routine and the never-ending fighting priorities.
Click here for the full list of 2022 Star Women in Grocery award winners.