“We have lost one of the supply chain profession’s most prominent thought leaders with the passing of Roddy Martin,” said Jake Barr, a friend and colleague of University of Pretoria (UP) alumnus Roderick “Roddy” Mitchell Martin who recently passed away.

Martin, who graduated with a Bachelor in Engineering from UP, was born in Johannesburg and emigrated to the US in 1998. He held several significant positions at SAB, TraceLink, AMR & Gartner, Accenture, CCI and Deloitte.

“Roddy’s impact was profound across verticals and in driving real operational change to the largest companies in the world,” Barr added. “He landed concrete, action-oriented business and supply chain transformations for the world’s largest corporations. Throughout his career in the corporate world as an analyst and consultant, he brought organisations and people together to rethink the constraints limiting progress.”    

So significant was his reputation and the respect that his peers held for him, that they created an endowed supply chain scholarship at UP to ensure that Martin’s contribution to the industry lives on. “The scholarship will provide tuition throughout a selected student’s full academic career, ensuring that Roddy’s influence is felt for generations of supply chain professionals to come,” Barr explained.

Students who have enrolled in the applicable academic programmes at UP are eligible to apply for consideration. These programmes are BCom Supply Chain Management, BCom (Hons) Supply Chain Management, MPhil Business Management option Supply Chain Management and other courses within the supply chain management space.

“Over the years I had the privilege of working with Roddy Martin on multiple podcasts, events and content,” said Maria Villablanca, host of the podcast Transform Talks. “He was provocative, controversial, funny, extremely detailed, opinionated and wise. Most of all, he was a great connector of ideas, thoughts and people.” 

An article in business management magazine Supply Chain Management Review paid tribute to Martin with these words: “He was extraordinarily generous with his network in helping friends and colleagues to extend their work, [thus] improving supply chains,” said Kevin O’Marah, who penned the tribute. “He was part of the Accenture team behind the Visibility and Analytics Network blueprint, since adopted by multiple countries and UN agencies, bringing not only ideas but also trust and credibility earned through a lifetime of helping others.”