There are lots of memories that might come to mind when you think about a trip to Europe: Looking up at the Eiffel Tower. Drinking wine in a small Italian village. That first time being surrounded by people speaking a language you don’t know.
Or, you know — watching a car being assembled at a cutting-edge factory.
The year was 2008, and Stephanie Kyle had just finished her freshman year at the University of South Carolina. While on a Maymester trip, she took two factory tours in Prague.
“Volkswagen owns a car company called Skoda in the Czech Republic; at Skoda, that was the first time I’d ever seen just-in-time manufacturing,” recalls Kyle, a 2011 graduate of the Honors College and the Moore School of Business with a double major in international business and operations and supply chain. “You’d have a sedan coming down the line, and they’d have doors flying in from the door manufacturer, which would be a third party — not part of VW or Skoda. And right behind the sedan, you’d have a minivan. Everything is just coming in and being assembled, and it’s like magic. There is nothing as elegant as automotive manufacturing to display what a truly international supply chain looks like.”
From that moment, Kyle was hooked on global business. But the seeds of her future
career started much earlier.
A Charleston native, Kyle spent several years as a child in Alexandria, Virginia,
when her father was stationed there. Though she returned to the Charleston area in
second grade, one thing from Virginia stuck with her: exposure to and appreciation
for people from all over the world.
Fast-forward to junior year in high school, and she was ready to explore the world, or at least the United States. She entertained thoughts of traveling far from South Carolina for college — maybe Carnegie-Mellon or the University of Chicago — but everything changed when she toured USC.
“I just remember being so charmed by Columbia,” she says. It was a perfect spring day on the Horseshoe, and she was inspired by the story of the university ambassador leading her tour.
Everything is just coming in and being assembled, and it’s like magic. There is nothing as elegant as automotive manufacturing to display what a truly international supply chain looks like.
— 2011 Moore School alumna Stephanie Kyle
“He had just gone to the Education Without Borders conference in the United Arab Emirates, and he was planning to go to China to teach English,” she recalls. It all sounded so exotic — and yet, somehow achievable, because she was talking to someone who was telling her how it could be done.
As a student at USC, she attended the same international education conference, one of several overseas experiences she had while in college. She got involved in student organizations focused on global business and supply chain. Eventually, those out-of-classroom experiences merged with her studies. Starting as an economics major, she switched to international business and supply chain after touring the port in her hometown of Charleston.
“It’s kind of funny, because I literally grew up next to the port,” she says. “But when I actually went on a port tour in college, it was amazing — just the scale of it, the loading and unloading of the ships. All that — in combination with trips I’d had to Istanbul, Vienna and Prague, where I had seen the auto plant — it was just a feeling of electricity, thinking about how much needs to happen to get things from here to there. And I love the idea of making things. You get some raw material in the door, then you do something with it and make something that is real and tangible and relevant to people all over the world.”
Being a student of Moore School professor Sanjay Ahire was an important step on her journey, too.
“He could sell anyone on supply chain and operations,” she recalls, laughing. “Like, why would you study anything else?”
She also found it to be the perfect counterbalance to her international business studies.
International business courses could be somewhat theoretical. Supply chain felt more concrete. “With supply chain, you’re literally talking about getting things done, getting things made, getting things transported. It’s real and it’s tactical.”
Today, Kyle is pricing director for Milliken and Company, a global manufacturing leader in materials science in the Upstate. Over the course of her career, she has pivoted from supply chain to finance and strategy — but the core of what drives her doesn’t change.
“I just like to be a business person — I feel very limited when people put a tag on me,” she says. “Since beginning at Milliken, I’ve worked in strategy, which to me is just like connecting all the dots. I like any job where you get to connect all the dots.”