Sarah Barnett is a Council Director at Manufacturers Alliance. She is a corporate ESG professional, having previously served in both corporate and consulting roles to help companies advance their sustainability programs and achieve their ESG and business goals.

Prior to joining the Alliance, Sarah led the global sustainability program for 4 years at Axalta, a global coatings manufacturer, last serving as the Director of ESG. She frequently engaged with colleagues across the company as well as customers, suppliers, investors, and the Board of Directors to advance the company’s sustainability efforts and launch ambitious 2030 ESG goals. Throughout her time at Axalta, Sarah was an active member of the Manufacturers Alliance Sustainability Council. Before joining Axalta, Sarah was a sustainability consultant at ERM, a global sustainability consultancy, supporting corporate clients across industries to meet their sustainability challenges. Sarah holds both a BS in Chemical Engineering and an MS in Sustainable Engineering from Villanova University.

Kenny Lockhart manages the development of corporate procurement policies from quote to cash as well as leads the implementation and compliance monitoring.  In addition to those duties, Kenny leads the Indirect Sourcing strategy for Mueller Water Products.

As a Senior Client Development Manager, John is responsible for Schneider Electric’s Renewable Energy & Carbon Advisory (RECA) business development in North America, helping Schneider Electric’s clients assess and navigate renewable energy and carbon emission reduction opportunities, including large-scale offsite virtual and direct PPAs, commodity purchases, and onsite solutions. John works closely with corporate clients, particularly large industrials, to navigate the best approach to renewable energy and carbon reduction through strategy, sourcing and management of solutions in an ever-changing global market. He also serves on the Program Management team of PepsiCo’s pep+ REnew Supply Chain Renewables Program and frequently bridges the gap from client scoping tasks to successful project delivery. 

John has spent the past 25 years creating an increasingly positive environmental impact, including the last 13 years focused on the energy space. He started with Schneider Electric 7+ years ago.  Prior to Schneider Electric, John developed wind and solar renewable energy projects in the US for Mainstream Renewable Power (Dublin, Ireland) and Invenergy (Chicago, IL) and built corporate Sustainability programs (Hillshire Brands). John holds a Bachelor’s degree in Civil/Environmental Engineering from Marquette University and an MBA from DePaul University.

Kathy joined Milliken & Company in May 2016. During her time at Milliken, she has managed the strategic sourcing vision for numerous indirect spending categories including waste, temp labor, travel, laboratory, and packaging to name a few. She was promoted to a Senior Sourcing Manager position in September 2019. Her responsibilities now include managing a team of 4 indirect procurement professionals across the company’s divisions as well as continuing to oversee indirect spending within the Corporate function. In 2021, she started leading the Supplier Diversity program for Milliken and has grown that program to include development goals to track & grow Tier I and Tier II spending, educational sessions for diverse suppliers, and matchmaking events.

Prior to joining Milliken, she worked for a cable manufacturer called Prysmian for 9 years and served as their North American Director of Non-Raw Materials. Kathy also worked at General Electric for approximately 9 years where she worked in various roles. Collectively she has over 25 years of procurement experience.

Kathy received her undergraduate degree in Liberal Arts from the University of Iowa and maintains her ASCM CPIM certification. She is currently working towards her ISM CPSD (Certified Professional in Supplier Diversity) certification.

As Managing Director at CoVest, Andy oversees CoVest’s core MRO & Facilities Services platform. Andy has also drawn on his experience in finance to build an Analytics team focused on providing sourcing and category management tools for CoVest Members. In addition to Spend Categorization tools, the CoVest Analytics Team provides a wide array of savings, spend, auditing and compliance analyses for Members. Andy is a graduate of Ohio University (BA) and Cleveland State University (MBA).

About CoVest Sourcing Network: CoVest is a Group Purchasing Organization focused on large corporations, founded on partnership, transparency, and providing value-added services. We enable members to realize significant cost savings through the utilization of our supplier agreements that drive down costs for indirect categories by leveraging the collective purchasing power of member companies. CoVest provides best-in-class pricing to our members through these negotiated supplier agreements.