# Sarah Barnes-Humphrey Founder & CEO, Let's Talk Supply Chain™ Canonical: https://mornings.network/shows/center-stage/guests/sarah-barnes-humphrey ## Biography Sarah Barnes-Humphrey is a supply chain media entrepreneur, best-selling author, and one of the most recognized voices in global logistics — the founder and CEO of Let's Talk Supply Chain™, a media platform that has grown to connect over 1.5 million supply chain professionals worldwide. Named a Top 100 Most Influential Women Leader in Supply Chain globally and a Top 100 Most Influential Women in Canadian Supply Chain by the Supply Chain Management Association (SCMA), Sarah built her platform not from a position of comfort or credential, but from the rubble of professional collapse, personal reinvention, and hard-won self-discovery. Sarah grew up immersed in supply chain at the literal dinner table — her family ran Ice Corp Logistics, a freight forwarding business just outside Toronto, Canada. She went straight from high school into the family company, working her way up through reception, operations, and sales until she held the title of Director of Sales and Marketing. She spent two decades inside that world, becoming fluent in a language that most people didn't even realize they were speaking — until COVID supply shocks made global headlines. Then, in late 2017, the family business closed its doors. Ten days before her 37th birthday, the career she had spent her entire adult life building was gone. The plan was gone. And, as she has shared candidly, so was her sense of identity. What followed was a year that most people would keep hidden. Sarah struggled to land interviews. She took two part-time jobs to stay afloat — including mopping floors at a tennis club. But while she was navigating rock bottom, she was also honoring a quiet commitment: she had started a podcast in 2016, and by the time the company closed, companies were paying to appear on it. She kept recording out of obligation to them. That obligation became a lifeline. What began as the scrappy podcast '2 Babes Talk Supply Chain' was rebranded in April 2018 to Let's Talk Supply Chain™ — after she realized no woman would come on a show with that name — and the rest became supply chain media history. Let's Talk Supply Chain™ is now one of the top 1% most downloaded podcasts globally, with 450+ episodes, 300,000+ listeners, and 50 million supply chain professionals reached. Beyond the flagship show, Sarah hosts Women in Supply Chain™ — a series dedicated to amplifying female voices in a historically male-dominated industry — and Blended, a DEI-focused podcast and companion nonprofit (the Blended Pledge) that gathers people from different walks of life to have the conversations most rooms are afraid to have. She also founded the Secret Society of Supply Chain, the industry's largest private professional network. Sarah is a Forbes Business Council contributor and a FITT (Forum for International Trade Training) board director, and she co-founded Shipz, a digital platform designed to bring freight forwarders and shippers together in a collaborative ecosystem. The throughline in every venture Sarah has built is the same: creating safe spaces where underrepresented voices can be seen, heard, and understood. She has spoken on stages around the world — a remarkable fact given that she once had a lifelong terror of public speaking so severe that the idea of joining Toastmasters made her hands sweat. Her solution was characteristically extreme: she hired a talent agent, walked into auditions, got yelled out of rooms for being unable to memorize lines, and kept going. She ended up on live television twice. The fear didn't disappear — it just stopped being in charge. In October 2025, Sarah published her debut memoir, *I Buried Her in a French Press: A Memoir About Finding My Voice and the Power of Being Heard* — which immediately became an Amazon #1 Best Seller. The book is at once a deeply personal account of identity, loss, and rebuilding, and a universal guide to discovering the superpower hidden inside the struggle. It tells the story of a woman who lost everything and found, in that loss, the exact thing she needed to build something that would outlast it. For Sarah Barnes-Humphrey, the supply chain has always been about more than freight — it's about what it takes to keep moving when the system breaks down. ## Links - linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sarahbarneshumphrey - facebook: https://www.facebook.com/LetsTalkSupplyChain - instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sarahbarneshumphrey/ - twitter: https://x.com/sarahbarneshumphrey - youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/LetsTalkSupplyChain ## Transcript A lot of people are one phone call away from freefall. Job gone, plan gone, pride gone. You still have to act normal. You don't just lose money, you lose identity. You lose the part of you that knew what tomorrow was supposed to look like. If you've ever had to restart in silence, this is for you. Today's guest has lived that reset. And she rebuilt from the bottom. Sarah Barnes Humphrey grew up in her family freight forwarding business, Ice Corp Logistics. She spent years building a career in supply chain. She reached director level. Then the company closed in late 2017. The foundation cracked. The next chapter got rough. She spent a year struggling to land interviews. She took two part-time jobs. One of them was mopping floors at a tennis club. And that whole time she carried a secret. She had a lifelong terror of public speaking. But instead of joining Toast Masters to face that fear, she hired a talent agent for reps. She ended up on live TV twice. Then she built Let's Talk Supply Chain. It launched in 2016 and rebranded in 2018. It now reaches over 1.5 million professionals. She didn't build it from comfort. She built it from nights where self-worth was the real supply she couldn't afford to lose. So, if you're rebuilding right now, listen close. This isn't a highlight reel. It's a real blueprint for finding your voice again. Nation, please welcome Sarah to Mornings in the Lab. Sarah Barnes Humphrey, welcome to Mornings in the Lab with Keith, John, and friends. >> Morning. What did I get myself into? Thanks for having me. >> I was involved with inviting you to the show. True story. And I want to tell you why your resilience struck me. Because you know, we talk on the show to a lot of folks — and the reason we get out of bed is to help people achieve greatness and help people achieve goals that maybe they're stuck with. You had a great job, great career, and all of a sudden you lost it all. >> Gone. Boom. >> Yeah. But you didn't give up. >> It was 10 days before my 37th birthday. >> You didn't give up, though. And most people will. And I'm like, I got to go talk to Sarah because I got to find some inspiring words for her to help our community to learn from Sarah — as to why, what kept you going? >> I've had this question asked a couple of times because obviously the book came out in October and you know it goes through the story of where I started and what that looked like and everything that I had been through up until that point. And I had started this podcast back in 2016 and by the time that the company closed its doors, I had companies paying to come on the show. So, to be honest with you, I kept it going out of obligation just to keep myself busy. I had a couple of other side hustles, but I had obligation to those folks who had paid to come on the show. And so that's kind of what kept me up — or got me up in the morning. And you know, there would be periods through the day where I'd be on the couch crying, but then I'd get back to doing some work and trying to find a job. And, you know, it's just part of the human experience.