Nada R. Sanders

Nada Rankovic Sanders is an American university professor specializing in forecasting and supply-chain management. She is the Distinguished Professor of Supply Chain Management at the D’Amore-McKim School of Business at Northeastern University. She is also a research scholar, academic editor, reference book author, keynote speaker, business consultant, and corporate board member. Her forecasts describing the impact of the economic crisis on supply disruptions resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic received media coverage. Her latest book The Humachine, as well as her 2023 article published in HBR (both co-authored with John D. Wood) explore the influence of artificial intelligence over world business, culture and skills.

Early life and education Sanders was born in Kraljevo in the former Yugoslavia. She studied mechanical engineering at Franklin University, where she received a BS in Engineering Technology in 1978. She went on to study at Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio, where she received an MBA in 1981 from the Fisher College of Business and a PhD in operations management and logistics at the same place under the supervision of Larry Ritzman.

Career Sanders joined Wright State University after graduation, where she progressed from assistant professor to professor. Later, she has successively been the West Chair at the Neely School of Business at Texas Christian University (2007–2009), Iacocca Chair of Supply Chain Management at Lehigh University (2009–2014), and Distinguished Professor of Supply Chain Management at the D’Amore-McKim School of Business at Northeastern University (2014 to present). and referred as reading in university courses covering these matters. Her research is cited in current Wikipedia entries on forecasting, global value chain, electronic business, logistics, operations management procurement, supply chain, and supply chain management.

In 1996, Sanders was ranked among major contributors to the field of production and operations management in the US in preceding years, according to a study from the David Eccles School of Business, University of Utah. She has been a keynote speaker at conferences in her specialties.

As an institutional executive, she has served as a president of the Production and Operations Management Society (POMS, 2019), a Fellow and vice-president of Decision Sciences Institute, a member of the Board of Economic Advisors of the Association of Industries of Massachusetts (AIM), and a member of the Board of Consultants of the International Institute of Forecasters (IIF).

As an editor, Sanders is a member of the editorial boards of several academic journals, among them the Journal of Business Logistics, the Journal of Supply Chain Management, and Production and Operations Management. She has also been a co-editor of several special journal issues, including "Big Data Driven Supply Chain Management" (Production and Operations Management, 2017), "Big Data Driven Forecasting in Supply Chain Management" (International Journal of Forecasting, 2017), "Perspectives on Big Data" (Operations Management, 2018), "Sustainable Supply Chains in a Digital Interconnected World," (Journal of Business Logistics, 2019), and "Using Interdisciplinary Research to Address Contemporary SCM Problems" (Journal of Business Logistics, 2016).

Selected works

Papers Sanders has published over 120 articles in peer-reviewed academic journals which have been cited over 6,400 times; Cited by 536 Related articles (Oct 2021).

Honors Fellow, Decision Science Institute (2008) Named Eunice and James L. West Chair and Professor in Supply Chain Management, Neeley School of Business, Texas Christian University, (2007–2009) Carl & Ingeborg Beidleman Research Award in Business & Economics (Leigh University, 2012) Named Iacocca Chair and Professor of Supply Chain Management,'' Lehigh University (2009–2014)