Stanly was earlier the vice-president of strategic sourcing and logistics for International Multifoods, based in Minneapolis for seven
years. He began his career in grain merchandising operations with Pillsbury, where he worked for ten years, and was a division
director of materials management. Later, Stanly contributed to clients’ working capital and spend management initiatives as a
purchasing and supply management consulting manager with McKinsey & Company. While his career has centered on commodity
purchasing in the food and agri-business sector, he has had related management responsibilities in food manufacturing quality
assurance, inventory logistics, and transportation. A hallmark of Stanly’s work has been in transforming purchasing departments
into highly differentiated extensions of their customers’ own purchasing efforts. Additionally, his work in risk management and
supplier development have been particularly followed by industry observers.
Much of his professional work has focused on purchasing strategy development, purchasing organization design, and commodity
price risk management. Consequently, Stanly has addressed organizations in the USA, Canada, Venezuela, Switzerland, and Italy
on issues of purchasing best practices implementation. He led a major industry purchasing practices study with faculty from
Arizona State University, co-presenting the findings at the International Supply Management Conference. And, he has been a
graduate school instructor in purchasing management at Metropolitan State University in Minnesota, creating the curriculum and
study materials for courses in Price Determination and Current Trends in Purchasing. Stanly’s regular columns on commodity price
outlooks have appeared in Purchasing Today, and more recently, Inside Supply Management and InfoEdge magazines, and he has
published scholarly work in the Journal of Supply Chain Management and a commodity market case study in Purchasing Insights.
His certifications include that of Certified Purchasing Manager (C.P.M.) from the Institute for Supply Management and he has been a
registered Commodity Trading Advisor (CTA) with the CFTC and NFA since 1989. Stanly has passed the NASD Series 3, 30, 31, and
33 commodity examinations. He is currently testing for the APICS CPIM certification, with two of the five modules completed. A
member of the American Economics Association, International Food and Agribusiness Association, American Agricultural
Economics Association, Global Association of Risk Professionals, International Association of Finance Engineers, and other
economics and finance forums, Stanly has served his community in leadership positions with the Boy Scouts of America for over 20
years, and has regularly led efforts in addressing the needs of the homeless and hungry. Also in the community, he has for many
years actively supported development of minority-owned, diversity enterprises as an active member of the National Minority Supplier
Development Council.
A native of Louisiana from a family of educators, he received his BS from Louisiana State University and his MBA from Northwestern
State University where his coursework concentration and graduate assistantship was in accounting. Joan Rains Stanly, his wife,
works with and teaches elementary school children and is active in School Board and PTA affairs. They have four children who are
very active in music, sports, and the performing arts, and their oldest son has recently moved to Portugal to teach for the Church for
two-years.
bottom line. SM 2005, Michael Stanly
