Nyssa Gardebrecht serves as senior business analyst for WSI (Warehouse Specialists, LLC), where she analyzes complex challenges, identifies broader opportunities, and designs scalable solutions.
Each day, Gardebrecht collaborates with customers, operations leaders, compliance teams, developers, and technology partners to translate business needs into practical solutions.
Rather than just addressing the problems presented, she considers their place within WSI’s ecosystem and seeks reusable frameworks, standardized processes, and scalable capabilities for broader organizational benefit.
Much of her work focuses on maximizing the ProActive features of Manhattan Active WM, where she promotes configurable tools, extensible frameworks, and scalable patterns to foster self-sufficiency for WSI and its customers.
Her first corporate role was at Pitney Bowes, where she developed a customer-facing support team, demonstrated technical aptitude and troubleshooting skills, and quickly moved into internal technical support, where she assisted field service technicians who maintained and repaired mailing equipment nationwide. She later joined an exclusive support team for one of the company's first technology-forward mailing systems.
In 2011, Gardebrecht joined WSI as a help desk analyst, where she supported business operations across the organization, deployed software, managed user access, troubleshot hardware, and provided operational support.
After briefly leaving WSI, she implemented anti-fraud software in financial services, improving her expertise in deployment, adoption, customer training, and process improvement.
Nearly 18 months later, she returned to WSI's help desk, where she oversaw daily support operations, initiated training programs, launched monthly knowledge-sharing communications, and pioneered measures to reduce recurring support issues.
Additionally, she was instrumental in deploying a new ticketing platform and managing critical business systems.
In February 2020, she joined WSI's Manhattan implementation team during one of the company's most significant technology transformations.
Then, in 2023, she was promoted to her current role, where she leads strategic solution design, architecting systems, and optimizing processes.
Her journey from dairy farm worker to senior supply chain technology leader demonstrates personal perseverance and reflects a deep commitment to innovation, improvement, and elevating those around her.
Gardebrecht was named a winner of this year’s Women in Supply Chain Forum™ award, presented by Food Logistics and Supply & Demand Chain Executive, in the Rising Stars category.
Marina Mayer, editor-in-chief of Food Logistics and Supply & Demand Chain Executive and co-founder of the Women in Supply Chain Forum™, sat down with Gardebrecht to discuss the future of AI, the importance of empowering organizations to own their technology journey and how complex supply chain challenges have evolved over the years.
CLICK HERE to learn more about the winners from this year's Women in Supply Chain Forum™ Award.
CLICK HERE to register, sponsor and/or learn more about this year’s Women in Supply Chain Forum™, Nov. 17-19 in Charleston, S.C.
Food Logistics and Supply & Demand Chain Executive: Women in Supply Chain Forum™ Award
Nyssa Gardebrecht, Senior Business Analyst, Kase (a WSI company)
Category: Rising Stars
Food Logistics and Supply & Demand Chain Executive: Hello, my name is Marina Mayer, Editor-in-Chief of Food Logistics and Supply and Demand Chain Executive, and I am here with Nyssa Gardebrecht, Senior Business Analyst for KASE, a WSI company.
Nyssa is a recipient of this year's Women in Supply Chain Forum Award in the Rising Stars category. Nyssa, thank you so much for joining me today.
Your role as Senior Business Analyst is to analyze complex challenges. Over the course of your career, how have these complex challenges evolved?
Nyssa Gardebrecht: I look back to the early part of my career, and at that point, my value really was measured and assessed by how quickly we could solve problems. You know, so how many issues can we resolve in a day, and how quickly can we close them out?
And one of the biggest things that I've noticed, based on what I do now, is that we're actually able to, instead of just fix the symptom of the problem, really dig into what is the root of it. You know, start asking, why is this happening in the first place? Why does this process exist in the first place? And really dig into the why behind things. And one of the things that I really love about what I do today, and I think that I'm pretty good at, is just being able to view some of these processes and issues from that kind of holistic 10,000-foot view, while not really losing that detailed level that makes it really complex.
Food Logistics and Supply & Demand Chain Executive: You grew up in a family with limited resources. You took your first job on a local dairy farm, you biked to work, you milked about 70 cows, you fed some calves, you cleaned the barn, and then you biked home after your shift. How does this type of experience characterize your leadership and how you view workforce style today?
Gardebrecht: When you grow up the way that I did, and come from those humble origins like that, it really kind of ingrains in you some key values, right? And that really comes down to, be humble, be kind, be smart, right.
I really count on those values as I look to the type of leader that I am. I try to lead by example, and I knew very early on in my career that nothing was going to be handed to me. I’m going to have to work really hard, I’m going to have to get my hands dirty, and I was going to have to be the type of leader that I wanted to have myself.
Food Logistics and Supply & Demand Chain Executive: One of your key messages is to empower organizations to own their technology journey. What does that look like?
Gardebrecht: This is a really passionate topic of mine. I have given a couple presentations on this very thing, and, for me, really owning your technology boils down to the organizations that are going to not only succeed, but really thrive in this upcoming technology change, the ones who are no longer looking at technology as an IT issue.
They're not segregating out operations, processing, business structure from technology. They're recognizing that those things are intertwined with themselves. So when you are able to do that, you really are able to change that mindset from, what can the system do here, to what are we trying to solve, and what might be possible with this system.
And when we have organizations that really own their technology and have that authorship over it, you can start putting that technology and the tools in the hands of your business experts. And that's really when you're going to start to see your systems and your technology work for you instead of just being a tool that's utilized.
Food Logistics and Supply & Demand Chain Executive: Please share a difficult supply chain disruption you managed, and how you turned that challenge into an opportunity.
Gardebrecht: This is the basis of what my job is. So, being able to narrow that down to one or two was really hard for me, but I think we can kind of sum up some of these scenarios as we see this type of thing all the time, right? Where a system or a process is designed, and then it hits the warehouse floor, and we start to realize very, very quickly that it doesn't actually work in real life. When we design things kind of in a silo, away from that operational process, we start to lose that tangible piece of it.
A couple good examples of that we've done recently is we had a returns process at some of our facilities in our WMS, and what that really looked like for an operator was getting blind shipments in from our customers' customers, and then having to have them sit there until the customer was able to enter a systemic ASN to receive them against them.
One of the really cool things that we did in the past couple of years was, we created a return station, and so we were able to utilize some built-in functionality in our WMS, but really hone it into what made sense for our customers.
And what that did for the site then was enable them to basically have a return, like a reverse pack station.
So, instead of waiting for the customer or someone to give them the data to receive against, they were able to actually create them on the fly, and they were able to process those returns much quicker, without really that lag time and the bottleneck of waiting.
Food Logistics and Supply & Demand Chain Executive: What supply chain trend do you think will have the biggest impact over the next 5 years?
Gardebrecht: Without a question, it's going to be AI, right? It's everywhere, it's bled into everything that we read and we see, and it's coming down from leadership and everything, but I think that the bigger question is not so much, are we using AI, and how are we using AI, right? It's how are we using AI to augment our experts, right? It's really the shift between augmentation and automation. The organizations that are really going to get ahead using AR are not the ones that are able to trim down their workforce the most or just utilize it in the most areas. They're the ones who recognize that to really get a benefit out of it and see the value in using AI as a tool is to put it in the hands of their experts, so that we can take some of those monotonous kind of tasks that they're doing, automate those, and then allow them to work on more impactful problems. Allow them to make better decisions, and really do what they do best, just much better.
Food Logistics and Supply & Demand Chain Executive: What can organizations do to attract, retain, and even develop women in supply chain roles?
Gardebrecht: This is a really, really hard question for me to answer, to be honest, but I think the biggest thing that organizations need to think about, and prospective employees need to think about, is not so much how do organizations attract more women, like, smart, talented women into their businesses, but why are they seeking them out, right?
We really want to make sure that these organizations that are out there, they're not just trying to hit a metric, right? They're recognizing that if we put women in the rooms where decisions are made, they can shape supply chain, and they can make it something totally different. Supply chain is built up of a million different complex problems; it's one of those unique industries that really touches almost every other industry in the world. And those type of complex problems really need people who view things differently.
So, I think if we have an organization that wants just one, give me one blanket answer, what can I do? It's really bring women in, and once they're there, listen to them, right? Put them in the room, give them a seat, trust their expertise and let them help shape the business.
Food Logistics and Supply & Demand Chain Executive: If you could go back in time and talk to your younger self, what would you tell her?
Gardebrecht: I mean, everything that you're hoping for is going to happen, but it's not going to be handed to you. It's going to take a lot of hard work, it's going to take a lot of perseverance.
Go boldly into things, and trust yourself, and don't be afraid to speak up because your opinion does matter. Your intuition is oftentimes right, and that is going to lead you places when you start to have the confidence in yourself to speak up.
Food Logistics and Supply & Demand Chain Executive: If you could leave the audience with one piece of advice about being a woman in the supply chain, what would it be?
Gardebrecht: I would say the first thing is just don't disqualify yourself.
I think that women very oftentimes will not put themselves up for an elevated position or something that they look at it and they don't check every single box. They're a little bit timid in that because they don't want to be rejected.
But take the job, go after the challenging jobs. Don't disqualify yourself based on this static set of rules. Yes, experience matters, of course, but so does curiosity. So does the ability to learn new things, and the ability to view things completely differently. Those things matter, and that is really where we're going to start to see a shift in how supply chain operates.
So be bold, be brave, be yourself, trust yourself, and just don't be afraid to say the thing.
Food Logistics and Supply & Demand Chain Executive: To learn more about Nyssa and our other Women in Supply Chain Forum award winners, CLICK HERE.
Register for this year's Women in Supply Chain Forum™ at http://www.womeninsupplychainforum.com.
