Celebrating Women in Logistics: Ching Pei's Journey
by Jaidyn Farar
Welcome back, logistics aficionados! This is the second installment of our blog series celebrating Women's History Month. Get ready for a fresh dose of wisdom as we hear the unique perspectives that make Ching Pei stand out in the shipping and logistics industry.
Before diving into the second chapter of our celebration, we’ll quickly look at a few stats about women in the logistics space.
Women in logistics
Women have historically been underrepresented in the logistics industry, but the gap is closing.
According to a 2023 Gartner survey, women make up 41% of the supply chain workforce, up from 39% in 2022. The survey also found that women make up 26% of supply chain C-Suite and executive leadership, up from 19% in 2022. As this pattern of diversification continues (and accelerates) more and more women will find roles in the supply chain industry.
This isn’t just good news for women—it’s good news for everybody. Research has shown that increased diversity benefits organizations in many ways. For one thing, it drives innovation; a Boston Consulting Group study found that companies with above-average leadership diversity report 19% higher innovation revenue than companies with below-average leadership diversity.
The study states, “Nearly half the revenue of companies with more diverse leadership comes from products and services launched in the past three years.”
Meet Ching Pei
Now, let’s meet one of the women making her mark as a leader in shipping technology!
Introducing Ching Pei, VP of product at EasyPost. Ching started her career in technical sales and has found her niche in the SaaS world. In the year and half she’s been at EasyPost, she’s assembled and led a team of product experts who have helped deliver an amazing experience for EasyPost users.
Ching’s insights on product management
In her February Unboxing Logistics podcast episode, Ching shares what product management is, why it’s crucial for an organization’s growth, and what she believes the future holds in store for logistics technology.
Product management: the hub of the wheel
As a product manager, everything comes down to prioritization. But that’s not always easy when you need to please both internal and external stakeholders.
“I think of product as a center spoke of a wheel, with each of your departments surrounding that. Product managers [are] hearing all of this feedback coming in from external customers and internal customers. It’s their job to come in and prioritize—really look at the business and say, where is our trajectory? Where is our value? How are we going to get healthy in terms of that balance between reactive and proactive?”
Giving customers the features they want
One of the most important skills for product managers? Learning to step back and start small when necessary.
Ching explains, “You want to put out this brand new, very shiny, very big impact item into the marketplace and see what happens.”
“But in reality, you need to look at your customer value, what the customers are asking for. I always like to say, dip your toe into the water. You just want to feel out the market.”
What the future holds in store for logistics technology
Ching is excited about the future of EasyPost, but she also foresees big things in store for the logistics industry as a whole.
“I think we're on the precipice of change. We've seen other laggard industries already make this jump. Medicine has seen a lot of change in electronic records—really adopting that and making sure they're able to leverage technology. You're seeing manufacturing change with robotics and IoT. So why not logistics?”
Follow along for more women in logistics spotlights
Ching is just one of four wonderful women we’re highlighting in our Women’s History Month blog series. Check out last week’s post on Anna Podolskaya, then stay tuned during March for the next two spotlights.
To learn more about product management, watch or listen to Ching’s podcast episode, Leveling Up Product Management.