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Healthcare Supply Chain Leadership Hall of Fame to honor 3 in its Future Famers Class of 2025 during November event

SCHAUMBURG, IL (June 9, 2025) — Bellwether League Foundation's Healthcare Supply Chain Leadership Hall of Fame™ will recognize and welcome three professionals into the Future Famers Class of 2025 this fall. They join 42 earlier recipients of this notable honor.

The Hall of Fame's Future Famers recognition honors supply chain professionals making significant contributions to their organizations and industry during the first decade or so (up to 12 years) of their careers.

The Future Famers Class of 2025 includes the following professionals: Reuben Philip, Director of Product, Clarium Inc.; Andrea C. Poulopoulos, Chief Supply Chain Officer, Corewell Health; and Nicole Schmidt, RT (R)(VI), System Director, Clinical Supply Optimization, Spend Management, The University of Kansas Health System.

This trio represents the latest examples of the next-generation supply chain leader with deep ties in the clinical and information technology realms that motivate colleagues to unite around a common mission and vision during daily operations that can be riddled with crises and disruptions.

The Future Famers Class of 2025 will be recognized at the 18th Annual Bellwether League Foundation Induction & Recognition Event (BLFIRE), scheduled for Monday, November 10, at Wayne State University, Detroit, MI.

"This category exemplifies the future evolution of healthcare supply chain," said Barbara Strain, Bellwether Class of 2021, and BLF Board Chairman. "Each of the awardees bring forth their set of tools from data and analytics to healthcare systems integration to product usage and selection with a keen eye on patient safety. We congratulate Reuben, Andrea and Nicole; the Bellwether light is indeed shining brighter."

Future Famers Class of 2025

Reuben Philip represents a technology innovator with roots in healthcare supply chain information systems who wields data science skills that provides healthcare leaders useful information for clinical, financial and operational decision-making and improvement. Not only did Philip lead the development and launch of a healthcare-centric crowd-sourced supply chain resilience platform that performs as a central nervous system circulating desired data throughout an entire enterprise, but he also has pioneered an electronic physician preference card "optimizer" that enables standardization and analyzes usage trends in real-time to optimize consumption and cost reduction. In addition, Philip has been marshaling the potential power of artificial intelligence (AI) as an enterprise-grade supply chain FTE to support the human requirement for data compilation and analysis necessary for effective decision making.

Andrea C. Poulopoulos developed her extensive information technology, logistics, procurement and sourcing skills rather quickly outside of the healthcare provider market segment before plunging into the deep end of a health system supply chain operation on the eve of a comprehensive merger — one that would forge the largest integrated delivery network (IDN) in the state and propel her to integrate and lead a team of nearly 1,000 supply chain staffers overseeing $6.5 billion in annual purchasing volume system-wide. Under Poulopoulos' coaching, leadership and mentoring, the multihospital system would blend multiple cultures, change group purchasing organizations (GPOs) and comprehensively restructure sourcing, contracting and logistics to its core, remaking and rebooting operations with results measured in months rather than years.

Nicole Schmidt maintains the daunting task of overseeing and managing product selection, sourcing and usage throughout her health system as they relate to and influence patient safety and quality outcomes. This includes detailed product pathways for clinicians and administrators to follow in tracing and recording product usage as a required component of a patient's journey. She leads a team that functions as the face of spend management for product-related patient safety events, which also includes handling recalls. In fact, two years ago, one of their discoveries motivated a supplier to change the material of its product, an effort that led the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to award Schmidt's organization with a certificate for promoting patient safety by influencing a manufacturer's redesign of a product. Schmidt also created the health system's Preference Card Supply Optimization Initiative.

About Bellwether League Foundation

Bellwether League Foundation™ (BLF) is an independent 501(c)3 nonprofit charitable foundation that offers programs to educate, endow and evaluate professionals in healthcare supply chain performance excellence. BLF accomplishes this through its primary operation, the Healthcare Supply Chain Leadership Hall of Fame™, its growing philanthropic efforts, which include Collegiate Capstone Projects and scholarships and its various multimedia properties.

The Healthcare Supply Chain Leadership Hall of Fame™ evaluates and validates professionals submitted for consideration in its three award programs: Bellwether Honorees, Ammer Honorees and Future Famers. The Hall of Fame also offers educational and professional development content via the annual Bellwether Leadership Symposium and its "Leaders & Luminaries" multimedia properties of online and printed content. The Hall of Fame selects deceased, retired and currently active professionals with a minimum of 25 years of exemplary service and leadership performance in supply chain operations that meet its criteria to be recognized publicly as Bellwether Class Honorees.

Future Famers represent supply chain professionals early in their healthcare careers (first 10- 12 years) who do not yet qualify for Bellwether consideration but have contributed meaningfully to the profession and industry.

Honorees who receive the "Dean S. Ammer Award for Healthcare Supply Chain Performance Excellence" represent noteworthy executives and professionals in the middle of their careers who, through their innovative leadership and influential project management experience, best exemplify the practice and spirit of healthcare supply chain performance excellence. To date, the Healthcare Supply Chain Leadership Hall of Fame has inducted 148 innovators, leaders and pioneers in healthcare supply chain management in seven distinct categories: Provider-Based Supply Chain Management, Manufacturing, Distribution, Group Purchasing, Consulting Services, Academia and Media. The Hall of Fame also has recognized 45 Future Famers and six Ammer Honorees.

BLF's philanthropy efforts support capstone educational and developmental projects, grants and scholarships to college-bound high school students who plan to study supply chain curricula, current college students who major in supply chain-related careers and professionals who pursue continuing education through associations and universities.

BLF salutes its six sustaining sponsors at the Founding/Platinum level — GHX, Northwestern Medicine, Owens & Minor, Premier, Vizient and Wingfoot Media — and more than 20 additional sustaining sponsors at the Gold, Silver and Bronze levels. This dedicated group represents manufacturers, distributors, group purchasing organizations (GPOs), integrated delivery networks (IDNs), consulting firms, professional associations and media. BLF also appreciates and thanks its devoted corporate and professional donors for their generosity, participation and partnership.

Launched in late July 2007 by a group of influential veterans in the healthcare supply chain industry, BLF began as an independent 501(c)(6) not-for-profit corporation that upgraded to an independent 501(c)(3) nonprofit charitable foundation in January 2021.

Or visit Bellwether League Foundation.