Bellwether League Foundation Honors Amanda Chawla and Anand Joshi with the Dean S. Ammer Award for Healthcare Supply Chain Performance Excellence

On June 20, the Bellwether League Foundation's Healthcare Supply Chain Leadership Hall of Fame recognized and welcomed two Honorees for the Dean S. Ammer Award for Healthcare Supply Chain Performance Excellence.

For 2024, the Ammer Honorees are Amanda Chawla, FACHE, CMRP, Vice President and Chief Supply Chain Officer, Stanford Medicine, Palo Alto, CA; and Anand S. Joshi, M.D., Senior Vice President, Procurement and Strategic Sourcing, New York-Presbyterian Hospital, New York.

The Ammer award is named for and dedicated to the first inductee into Bellwether League Foundation's Hall of Fame for Healthcare Supply Chain Leadership in 2008. BLF reserves this honor for those professionals in the middle of their careers that it deems best exemplify the practice and spirit of healthcare supply chain performance excellence through their innovative leadership and influential project management experience.

Bellwether League Foundation honors Chawla and Joshi this year as they join the 2023 honorees, Michael McCullough, Senior Vice President, Supply Chain, Wellstar Health System, Marietta, GA; and Régine Honoré Villain, Vice President, Supply Chain Network and Chief Supply Chain Officer, Ochsner Health, Baton Rouge, LA; the 2021 honoree Donna Van Vlerah, Senior Vice President, Supply & Support Services, Parkview Health, Fort Wayne, IN; and the 2020 honoree Randy V. Bradley, Ph.D., CPHIMS, FHIMSS, Associate Professor of Supply Chain Management and Information Systems, University of Tennessee Knoxville, Haslam College of Business, Department of Supply Chain Management. Just as Ammer outlined how healthcare supply chain was progressing in the mid-to-late 20th century, Bradley, Van Vlerah, McCullough and Villain and now Chawla and Joshi represent how the profession is expanding in the 21st century.

Chawla and Joshi will be recognized and saluted at the 17th Annual Bellwether League Foundation Induction & Recognition Event (BLFIRE), scheduled for Monday, October 7, at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

Barbara Strain, Bellwether Class of 2021, Board Chairman, Bellwether League Foundation, commended Chawla and Joshi for their innovative contributions to the profession and industry.

"In the tradition of Dean S. Ammer, who was the first inductee of the inaugural Bellwether class in 2008, the Bellwether League Foundation established a namesake award for leadership in supply chain excellence," Strain said. "Amanda Chawla and Anand Joshi epitomize the ongoing development of servant leadership within their teams, their communities and their profession. They are highly deserving of this recognition for their outstanding accomplishments and for continuing to leave their indelible mark on the industry."

Ammer Honoree Class of 2024

Amanda Chawla

Conventional thinking, sacred cows and the status quo represent a trio of business constants that Chawla dismisses and declines to embrace — particularly during crises. For example, during the global pandemic of 2020-2023, she disassembled internal challenges stemming from external issues and then rebuilt processes with a future post-crisis state in mind, using kaizen for end-to-end performance improvement. To Chawla, thinking outside the box meant little because she chose to eliminate the box. Acknowledging market volatility based on a wealth of information sources, she expanded their supply boundaries regardless of product segment. Chawla physically relocated her team's Assistant Director of Category Management to Asia to source new and sustainable product pipelines from five of seven continents more efficiently. She also retained an import agent partner to assist with customs and work directly with shippers and airfreight carriers on container volumes, delivery guarantees and risk avoidance measures. Chawla also worked with non-traditional sourcing suppliers for a variety of essential healthcare devices and products, including an aircraft manufacturer and several 3-D printing companies. Chawla recognizes that supply chain touches every aspect of an organization, using communication to lead her team through frequent live and multimedia events, huddles, meetings and other opportunities to solidify and strengthen relationship management.

Anand Joshi, MD

Through his clinical, consulting and management background, Joshi worked to completely overhaul the procurement function and department at his organization, rooted in strategic sourcing, service line management and physician engagement. As a credentialed doctor himself, Joshi made physician engagement the rule at his organization, but radically changed the parameters to collaborative cross-campus teamwork on optimal decisions for the organization from physicians simply telling procurement what to do. Joshi used a pragmatic, data-driven approach gleaned from his medical training and management consulting background to appeal to clinical colleagues and to appease fiscal and operational cohorts. His creativity, experience and personality enabled him to position supply chain throughout the organization as an essential connector and partner to everything. Joshi was instrumental in helping to lead an enterprise-wide initiative called “Hercules” that focuses on length of stay, revenue cycle, utilization and process improvement. As an active educator and professor, Joshi also mentors and teaches others about the basic and finer points of supply chain operations through collaboration, discussion, lecture and unique presentations, such as “live” RFP case studies where students and trainees role-play in evaluating supplier proposals. His creative, passionate and pragmatic approaches to supply chain’s transparency and reliability grant his place with senior executives deliberating enterprise-wide initiatives.