2021 STEP Ahead Chair

Kathy Wengel
Executive Vice President & Chief Global Supply Chain Officer
Johnson & Johnson

Kathy Wengel is Executive Vice President & Chief Global Supply Chain Officer for Johnson & Johnson, and a member of the company’s Executive Committee. A strong developer of globally diverse teams, she leads a Supply Chain organization that brings healthcare products and services to more than a billion patients and consumers around the world every day.

Kathy leads all aspects of Supply Chain across Johnson & Johnson’s three business sectors: Consumer Health, Medical Devices and Pharmaceuticals. Her responsibilities include enterprise Supply Chain strategy, innovation and deployment, planning, sourcing, manufacturing, distribution and customer service. She also has corporatewide responsibility for Quality & Compliance; Environmental Health, Safety & Sustainability; and Engineering & Property Services, including Real Estate, Facilities and Capital Project Management.

Since joining Johnson & Johnson in 1988, her responsibilities have grown to include a variety of strategic leadership and executive positions across the enterprise, working in multiple countries and roles within operations, quality, engineering, new product development and other business functions.

Prior to Kathy’s current role, she was Vice President, Quality & Compliance (Q&C), and the first Chief Quality Officer for Johnson & Johnson, with enterprise leadership responsibility for Q&C, Sterility Assurance and Operations Readiness & Convergence. During this time, she also co-led the design of Johnson & Johnson’s enterprise Supply Chain operating model that ultimately brought together more than twenty disparate groups using core standards and operating principles.

Kathy serves as Chairman of the Board of GS1 Global, an organization that sets and maintains standards regarding the exchange of critical business data. Kathy also sits on the board of the National Association of Manufacturers in the US, and on the advisory board of AWESOME, a nonprofit working on the advancement of women in senior supply chain roles. She is the executive sponsor for Johnson & Johnson’s Women’s Leadership & Inclusion initiative and for Johnson & Johnson’s Women in Science, Technology, Engineering, Math, Manufacturing and Design (WiSTEM²D) program.

In 2019, Kathy was recognized by the Council of Supply Management Professionals (CSCMP) as the recipient of its Distinguished Service Award, the industry’s top individual supply chain honor. In 2015, Kathy received both the National Association of Female Executives’ (NAFE) Women of Excellence Award and the Thinkers & Movers Award for innovative leadership by DSC Logistics. In 2014, Kathy received AWESOME’s Legendary Leadership Award.

Kathy holds a BSE degree in civil engineering and operations research from Princeton University.