Rock Stars of the Supply Chain: Hy-Vee’s Lisa Stowater Named Overall Top Warehousing Leader

Food Logistics talks exclusively with Stowater about her journey, the value in starting a career from the ground up and the importance of championing standards and sustainability.

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Lisa Stowater, SVP of Hy-Vee’s distribution center in Cherokee, Iowa, was named an overall winner of the Top Warehousing category for this year’s Rock Stars of the Supply Chain award, presented by Food Logistics.

Stowater began her career in 1991 at the Cherokee warehouse as a part-time record keeper before moving on to several other roles, including positions in the buying department and eventually the human resources (HR) department in 1999. During this time, she also pursued her registered nursing degree. She finished her degree but stayed on at Cherokee and was promoted several times within HR over the years, eventually adding the transportation department to her HR duties. In 2016, she became VP of the warehouse, and in 2023, was promoted to the SVP position she holds today, where she oversees approximately 300 employees and the distribution of millions of items each month to Hy-Vee’s more than 570 business units across the Midwest.

In short, Stowater is responsible for everything inbound and outbound at the 665,000-square-foot warehouse, which is a central storage and dry distribution facility that primarily houses convenience store stock and grocery stock for the Midwest-based grocery retailer.

Throughout 2024, Stowater spent months helping get Hy-Vee’s new distribution center in Cumming, Iowa, online, which included all of the operational requirements, ensuring it was staffed appropriately and helping to develop, implement and execute standard operating procedures.

She has continued to champion and maintain the Cherokee distribution center’s TRUE Zero Waste Platinum-Level certification administered by the Green Business Council, and continues to implement zero waste processes that include diverting millions of pounds of solid waste from landfills.

We talked exclusively with Stowater about her journey, the value in starting a career from the ground up and the importance of championing standards and sustainability.

 

Food Logistics: Let’s first talk about you. Tell me a little bit about yourself and your journey to get to this current stage in your career?

Lisa Stowater: I’ve worked at Hy-Vee for nearly 34 years, most of which has been spent working at Hy-Vee’s distribution center in Cherokee, Iowa. My career started as a part-time record keeper there. Within a few years I had the opportunity to move into a full-time position in the buying department and held several different roles after that. Those early years of my career gave me a taste for how things worked at the warehouse and allowed me to experience a bit of everything as I began to develop my skills.

While working, I decided to go back to school to study nursing. My intention was to become a registered nurse, but upon graduating, Hy-Vee offered me a position in their human resources department, so I decided to stay. I continued to advance within Hy-Vee and in 2016, became vice president of the warehouse, overseeing all operations of the facility. In 2023, I was promoted to my current position as senior vice president.

 

Food Logistics: One of the things outlined in your submission is how you’ve worked your way through the ranks of warehousing to get to your current position. You started out part-time as record keeper for the Cherokee warehouse, and today, you serve as an SVP. What can today’s youth learn from this pattern of success?

Stowater: I think there’s a lot of value in starting your career from the ground up, especially in supply chain where there are so many areas that intertwine. My first roles at Hy-Vee really allowed me to learn and develop the fundamentals of warehousing and enabled me to gain hands-on experience that I otherwise wouldn’t have.

Similarly, I’ve always strived to do more and learn more. After completing a task, I would always ask, “How can I help somebody else? How can I learn something new?” This mindset helped me develop a comprehensive set of skills and ultimately prepared me for the position I’m in today. 


Food Logistics: You also champion standards and sustainability. You were instrumental in the new distribution center in Cumming, Iowa, going online while maintaining the Cherokee distribution center’s TRUE Zero Waste Platinum-Level certification administered by the Green Business Council. Tell us more about the Cumming center and your role in upholding standards and sustainability?

Stowater: I’m deeply committed to sustainability and am proud of the efforts we’ve made so far at Hy-Vee. The Cherokee Distribution Center has been Platinum-Level TRUE Zero Waste certified since 2018, which means that nearly all waste from our facility is kept out of landfills through sustainable practices each year. At Hy-Vee, we promote a culture of innovation, and we’ve extended that into our warehouse. We’re always encouraging our teams to think differently and to come up with new ways to reuse materials and minimize our overall waste across the supply chain.

Our other distribution centers at Hy-Vee are also TRUE Zero Waste certified. When we started planning for our new distribution center in Cumming, Iowa, we really evaluated what we were doing well and what we could improve upon across our existing facilities. We were then able to incorporate our learnings into the building design of the newest warehouse to help maximize our sustainability efforts. 

 

Food Logistics: One of the goals outlined in your application is to support diverse individuals in the workplace. How does this work?

Stowater: I’m a firm believer that embracing people of different backgrounds makes for a better, stronger team. I always tell my employees to think of it like a wagon wheel: at the center is Hy-Vee, but surrounding it are the spokes, which represents every individual on our team. For the wheel to move forward, each of us has to bring our unique strengths and perspectives to the task at hand. Our people are the backbone of our company, so it’s imperative that we invest in their future by helping them grow and develop their skillsets with Hy-Vee.

We have a diverse group of employees at the Cherokee Distribution Center, many who are non-English speakers. To ensure our team is aligned and moving together toward the same goal, we invest in translation and interpretation services and also provide further education opportunities to create an inclusive work environment. 

 

Food Logistics: If you could have a conversation with your younger self, what would you tell her?

Stowater: My advice to her would be this: be curious and never stop learning. Realize that you’ll make mistakes — and you’ll learn from them. There are many valuable lessons that come from experience, and they can’t be replicated any other way.

I would also encourage my younger self to trust my instincts. Over the years, I’ve developed a strong network of supply chain professionals who I trust to bounce ideas off of and to ask how they’re approaching similar challenges. Having a trusted circle that I can turn to for honest feedback has been invaluable.


Food Logistics: The Top Warehousing Leader category recognizes professionals in the cold storage and warehousing space. What advice do you have for other warehousing leaders or even those looking to join the warehousing space?

Stowater: I encourage those in warehousing to develop a diverse knowledge base across all areas of the business. As a leader, it’s critical that you understand how your operations support the bigger picture of the overall business and communicate that to your teams, so they also understand. At Hy-Vee, that means understanding how our Cherokee Distribution Center is supporting and impacting those in transportation and our retail stores — and also identifying areas where we can support them better. It really comes down to learning and communicating.

I also think it’s important to embrace technology, especially when it will help your employees work smarter rather than harder. By balancing the skills of employees with the efficiencies of technology solutions, I think there will be more opportunities to do more for our stores while also creating an even better work environment for our employees.

 

Highlights from Stowater’s submission:

  • Through Stowater’s leadership, today more than half of those working at the Hy-Vee Cherokee facility are people of color and/or women.
  • Stowater provides numerous opportunities for Cherokee employees to learn different roles within the facility. Because of her efforts, more women are moving from warehouse generalist II roles, which involve lighter loads and general merchandise, to warehouse generalist I roles, which often entail heavier products, operating forklifts and doing more receiving work.
  • Over the next 12 months, Stowater plans to look for opportunities to develop third-party logistics (3PL) relationships for local businesses that may have a need to store goods in the area.
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