Makayla Irish loves sports. She grew up playing volleyball, softball and basketball, participated in intramurals in college, and currently plays league sports.
Certainly, she enjoys the competition she finds in sports, but she also loves the problem solving required to win, and the way teams collaborate. She appreciates hard-working teammates and good communication. She likes the relationships she forms through sports, and opportunities to notch solid, tangible wins.
A lot of those same things attracted her to the supply chain industry.
As a student at Indiana State University (ISU), Makayla knew she wanted to study business, but she wasn’t sure what to concentrate on. She had heard good things about ISU’s supply chain program, so she checked it out. When she saw a lot of focused, hard-working people in the program, she was sold. Four years later, she graduated with a degree in operations and supply chain management.
Now an international supply chain analyst with Allison Transmission, a world-leading manufacturer of fully automatic transmissions for medium- and heavy-duty commercial vehicles, Makayla is sometimes awed by the responsibility Allison has given her. At 23 years old, she works with Allison’s team in Hungary, connecting with critical suppliers to ensure that everything the team needs to do its work is available when it’s needed. There’s plenty of teamwork, problem solving, critical communication and relationship management. And when a problem is solved, you feel like you got that win. She loves it.
Having worked for a small manufacturer during her junior year at ISU, Makayla says she benefited from having two different supply chain experiences. In both jobs, though, the bottom line was the same: Get things where they need to be when they need to be there, whether that’s across town or across the globe.
With her whole career ahead of her, Makayla says she continually looks at the many opportunities around her at Allison, unsure where her career path will ultimately lead but confident that the opportunities are endless. And as a young woman in the supply chain industry, she is eager to share her passion with other female career seekers. She credits Allison and other advanced manufacturing and logistics companies with working to bring more women into the industry, and with helping them grow and develop once they’re onboard.
“There are so many pathways in supply chain,” she says, “and there’s a lot of different things you can do with it.”
