James Elkin is currently the Buyer for Functional Ingredients at General Mills, Inc. (GMI) in Minneapolis, MN. In this role, James is responsible for managing the total North American spend and sourcing strategies for six ingredient categories including Chemicals, Enrichments, Emulsifiers, Leavenings, Enzymes, and Dairy Cultures. Prior to his current role, James joined GMI as a Sourcing Operations Analyst supporting day-to-day management of several commodity categories including Cocoa/Chocolate, Dry Corn, Starches, and Non-Sucrose Sweeteners.
Entering the labor force at the onset of COVID proved to be a unique challenge from the get-go with onboarding/working from home, rapidly fluctuating demand, and innumerable supply disruptions. However, with unique challenges have come distinctive learning opportunities which James recently capitalized on by bringing one of his categories from a “crisis” risk level down to being out of recovery and back to stable.
James graduated in 2020 from the Wisconsin School of Business with his Bachelor of Business Administration in Operations & Technology Management and a Specialization in Supply Chain Management from the Grainger Center. Outside of his day job, James serves as the UW–Madison Campus Ambassador for Supply Chain at General Mills where he enjoys connecting with current UW students about life at GMI, and both internship and full-time opportunities.