Teresa Williams
Teresa (Teresa Bauer) Williams is a Director of Strategic Partnerships with approximately 12 years of experience in the supply chain and global standards industry. She specializes in driving cross industry collaboration and advancing the adoption of global data standards that improve visibility, efficiency, and interoperability across complex supply chain networks. She currently leads strategic partnerships at GS1 US, a not for profit organization responsible for developing and maintaining the global standards behind barcodes and product identification systems used worldwide.
In her role at GS1 US, Teresa works closely with large, highly influential enterprise organizations across retail, healthcare, and food industries. These partnerships are critical because major retailers and brands often drive widespread adoption of global standards across entire ecosystems. She focuses on ensuring that GS1 standards are properly understood, implemented, and embedded throughout organizations, not only at the executive level but across operational teams. Her work emphasizes education, alignment, and adoption so that businesses can fully realize the value of standardized product identification, improved traceability, and more efficient supply chain operations.
Prior to GS1 US, Teresa spent three years in the RFID industry working with radio frequency identification technologies used for automated tracking and data capture in supply chains. She also worked for a company that manufactured labels and RFID tags, further strengthening her technical understanding of product identification systems. Her career began at Best Buy, where she worked for eight years in retail operations, including hands on inventory cycle counts conducted overnight. That early operational experience shaped her appreciation for efficiency and transformation, as she now works with organizations to replace manual, time intensive processes with modern, automated systems that enable real time visibility and smarter decision making across the supply chain.
• CrossFit Coach Certification
• Miss Excel’s Top Productivity Hacks
• Developing Your Emotional Intelligence
• The University of Arizona Global Campus - B.A. in Marketing and Communication
• Wright State University - BBA
• Agent of the Month
• Department Employee of the Year
• Wellness Award
• Meritorious Performance Award
• The Center of Supply Chain Automation
• The International Air Transport Association (IATA)
• American Red Cross - Dayton Chapter
• Kittyhawk SAY Soccer
• Track Coach
• Dayton Historic Society (former)
• Children's Hunger Alliance (donor)
• Associate Board - Chairman of
American Red Cross
• SPRINGBORO ATHLETIC BOOSTERS ASSOCIATION
What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?
Don't be afraid of your own expertise. You are allowed to sit at the head of the table, never be intimidated. Ask the questions, and don't be afraid to ask the questions. Don't be afraid to be humble in the moment, and people will respect you for that. Not only that, they'll be more willing to give you more information. And just don't be afraid. Go for it. You are there for a reason, but you don't need to know everything - that'll come in time. Be a servant leader. You know, women can come off too hard and too strong, and they need to feel like they need to be that presence, or they look too intimidated. Finding that good middle ground of where you are there for a reason, but you don't need to know everything is key. Stay coachable and stay humble.
What are the biggest challenges or opportunities in your field right now?
The biggest challenge in my field is not necessarily competition, since we're the only global standard used in supply chain to identify products, places, and companies. It's really about whether brand owners want to invest in using global standards. We rely heavily on places like Amazon, Walmart, and Target to make that criteria a mandate. We can't make a brand owner or small company buy a global trade item identifier - the numbers that you put on the barcode. They can encode it however they please with their own internal system, but that number isn't going to pull nicely into another system like an SAP system or an Oracle system. So it's the knowledge that we provide to brand owners to understand how to do business more efficiently. It's not necessarily competitive, but it is a struggle to ensure that brand owners know. There's so many people in startup businesses that don't think about barcodes - they just want to sell their t-shirts or whatever they want to sell. That's the last thing on their mind, like oh, I have to identify each size, I have to identify each color. They're not thinking about that. So it's just a matter of educating the masses.
Locations
GS1 US
Springboro, OH 45066