Her Story
About Melissa
Melissa Gabriele serves as Purchasing Manager in Auburn, Massachusetts, where she has spent the past 10 years negotiating contracts and pricing with vendors while managing vendor relationships in the manufacturing field. With nearly 30 years of experience in manufacturing, she began her purchasing career accidentally while still in college after her boss was fired and has since built her expertise through self-directed learning, one-day seminars, and certifications including the CPP and CPPM from the American Purchasing Society. She maintains active memberships in the Institute of Supply Chain Management and serves as co-chair of the Tenant Board Association, a volunteer role focused on addressing complaints and improving facilities for elderly housing in her town. Gabriele attributes her success to hard work and a constant pursuit of knowledge and efficiency, and she values respect in both professional and personal interactions.
Her Interview
Ten minutes with Melissa
01What do you attribute your success to?
I think just hard work and knowledge, getting knowledge. I seek knowledge. I seek better ways to do things. I seek out ways to make things more efficient. I'm for some reason my mind says what's better than this? See this is taking too long. How can you do it better? And I just go and I look it up, I search things out, I kind of do my own thing to try to figure out better ways for things to work because there's always going to be a better way right?
02What’s the best career advice you’ve ever received?
I got put in this position so I got put in a purchasing position on accident still in when I was still in college and I kind of just went on with it from there so my boss had got fired and they said Melissa you want to start doing some purchasing? Here you go. So I kind of went into it kind of on my own and learned about it myself and like I said did classes the CPP and did a lot of one day seminars and stuff just to try to you know see what the best way I can do my job. So I can say like I've learned a lot doing seminars and my course training on the CPPM. It's mostly where I've got my education and information from.
03What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?
I think it's a fantastic industry it's very you know fast-paced very quick it's enjoyable especially you know if you can't save money for a company it just makes you feel good. It's like getting a coupon and going to the store. I just saved 10 bucks. It's just that's exciting. So I that to me I really get souped about that. You know saving the money and then getting product in here quickly and getting a great product out to our customer as quickly as possible. That makes you feel really good that hey we did a great job we got this out to our customer now they're gonna buy more. And we're gonna just keep going with this and you know making sure this company's stable and doing well and therefore you're doing well.
04What are the biggest challenges or opportunities in your field right now?
Most of my challenges is getting product at an extra cost extra shipping costs. Not getting it on time having vendors that don't respond but most of the time it's usually not getting product on time because you base our customers delivery date based on what our vendor's given us for a date. So if we don't get that product on time guess what? I'm not shipping to my customer on time and my customer is key. I believe there's quite a few opportunities. I actually just hired another woman to help. You know I think a buyer responsibility purchasing responsibilities are really important because if you just let the vendor tell you what the price is and you're gonna have high prices so you're gonna have somebody there to kind of work with them on quantities prices blankets what can we do to have better you know service? There's always going to be somebody there to kind of work with the vendors to get the things that you need in a timely manner and at a good price. So I think you know most businesses do need purchasing managers or buyers.
05What values are most important to you in your work and personal life?
Well I think you know you give respect you get respect. I think that's key. And you know you work with vendors for example and you know you gotta respect them to give you the right product you gotta respect them so that they can give you the proper things that you need and then of course you want your children and your husband and your family to respect you. I think respect is really important. If they don't respect you then they're just I don't feel any point. If you're not gonna respect me then why are you here? Right exactly. Like if we have to respect one another why are we both here?
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