Jennifer Freed

Jen Freed is the Global Sourcing Head of Contract Sales, Meetings, Print and Sales Training Services at Boehringer Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals, Inc., the world’s largest privately held pharmaceutical company. Jen’s team is located in the US and Germany and is responsible for worldwide spend of ~ € 450Mio. Jen’s early career was with IBM (Financial Analyst) and Emerson Electric (Site Direct & Indirect Purchasing). She has held increasingly responsible positions within BI Global Sourcing across diverse services commodities (IT Consulting, Management Consulting, BPO Outsourced Services, and Marketing Agencies), and was a change champion through two transformational Purchasing reorganizations. Her experiences have left her very aware of the importance of maintaining a global and external perspective, as well as building a positive team culture and maintaining a diverse set of individuals that understand and champion the overall qualitative and quantitative value that sourcing provides. Becoming even more flexible with her personal style and recognizing and valuing relationship building, influence, collaboration, and sincerity are what she considers to be her critical success factors. She does her best to integrate her work life with her personal life which involves raising a family, acting as a board member of a local land trust, and volunteering as a 4-H leader. Jen holds a B.S. in Animal Science and a B.A. in Economics from the University of Connecticut, and an M.B.A. from Western Connecticut State University.