Project Description
Arnold Sowa
Chief Procurement Officer
MetLife
Session:
C-Suite Plenary Session: Disruptive Technology and The New Economy
Wednesday, October 17th
8:30 AM
Arnold Sowa is Senior Vice President and Chief Procurement Officer for MetLife.
In this role, he is responsible for overseeing MetLife’s global procurement, travel, third-party risk management, and supply chain social responsibility programs. He currently is on the board of directors and treasurer of the National Minority Supplier Development Council (NMSDC).
He has won numerous awards for his support of supplier diversity initiatives including the NMSDC’s CPO of the Year Award in 2018 and ISM’s Supplier Diversity Advocate Award in 2016.
As Chief Procurement Officer at MetLife, Arnold has built a global organization of over 300 professionals in almost 50 countries who manage $5 billion in annual spend.
He also has been responsible for putting in place global third-party risk management and travel policies and programs and was behind the largest ever global implementation of Ariba OnDemand, which now covers over 95% of MetLife’s spend.
His prior procurement experiences have been at Bridgewater Associates, LP, the largest hedge fund in the world, where he was responsible for building a new procurement organization; as an advisor to GMAC/Ally Financial on creating their third-party risk management program; and as CPO at Capital One.
While at Capital One he re-engineered the procurement function and designed and rolled out industry-leading third-party risk management and supply chain social responsibility programs.
Prior to joining Capital One, Arnold held a number of management and operational positions focusing on economic development at the World Bank, the United Nations, and the U.S. Peace Corps.
During his tenure with the World Bank, he partnered with the government of Mozambique to transform their centrally planned economy to a market-based one, resulting in one of the fastest growing economies in the world.
Arnold has lived in and run operations in Sub-Saharan Africa and East Asia and speaks two African languages, Setswana and Chichewa, as well as Portuguese.
He has also held positions as a member of the Senior Executive Service with the U.S. Treasury Department, General Manager and head of worldwide sales operations with MicroStrategy, and strategy consultant with McKinsey & Company.
Arnold received a Bachelor of Science in Chemical Engineering from Northwestern University and has both a Master of Arts in Applied Economics and a Master of Business Administration with a focus in finance from Stanford University.
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/arnoldsowa/
