How Ops Leaders Actually Use AI at Work: an Expert Panel

Mary Kate has spent her career in supply chain and logistics, spanning from warehousing to demand and supply planning to procurement. She's spent the last 8 years working in the CPG start up world, specializing in personal care items such as feminine care, supplements, medicine and healthcare. She started her fractional operations consulting firm, ValueChain Consulting, in 2024 and works with CPG brands <$20mm in annual revenue to run their supply chains more efficiently and cost effectively.

Katie Seiffert is the COO at Catalyst Opportunity Funds, an impact real estate private equity firm with $350 million under management. She leads firm operations and fund management, ensuring alignment between investment performance and impact goals.

Katie brings 15 years of experience in institutional real estate, having worked on investments totaling more than $7 billion on behalf of some of the largest institutional investors in the U.S.

Elena Chopyak is the Director of Operations and Data Strategy at Wingspan, a communications firm. Her squiggly career path has taken her from international humanitarian work to digital health startups, venture capital, and sales. She’s always looking for ways to work smarter—whether through AI, virtual reality, or simply going back to pen and paper.

Alex Yaseen is the founder and CEO of Parabola. After working closely with the in-the-weeds people powering some of the largest retail and CPG brands, he started Parabola to empower the ops and finance teams closest to the messy work to be the ones who automate it. Today, teams at Brooklinen, Caraway, On Running, Flexport, and hundreds more use Parabola to automate the kind of work they once thought would always be manual.