Harry Davies is the Global Transportation Strategy and Sourcing Manager at Cisco. In that role, he helps shape ground and parcel transportation across EMEA and the Americas, building procurement strategies for complex logistics networks that move physical products across borders and between providers.
His career spans logistics, customs, and transportation roles across West Africa and Europe, with experience at Uber, Tesla, Mezc, and General Electric Oil and Gas. Harry’s work sits at the intersection of sourcing, operating risk, and multinational supply chain execution, where contract design, supplier selection, and service continuity all matter.
Background
Harry began his career in logistics freight forwarding in Ghana, working in operational roles that centered on customs clearance, transportation, warehousing, proof of delivery, and day-to-day coordination with customers. Alongside that experience, he studied procurement and supply, earning an HND in procurement and supply, and later completed freight forwarding training with the Ghana Institute of Freight Forwarding, affiliated with FIATA.
His early career also included work at General Electric Oil and Gas, after which he relocated to Senegal to strengthen his French language skills. There, he joined Mezc as product manager for warehouse and distribution, as well as customs house brokerage for Northern West Africa, covering seven countries in the cluster. That regional role broadened his remit from local operations to cross-border logistics management.
In 2019, Harry relocated to the Netherlands to join Uber as a logistics program manager for Europe, Middle East, and Africa. Over three years, he supported logistics for Uber’s e-bikes and scooters business before the role was eliminated as the company refocused. He then moved to Tesla, where he served as Senior Global Supply Manager for Europe, Middle East, and Africa, responsible for logistics procurement for finished vehicles produced at Gigafactory Berlin and distributed across the region. He later joined Cisco in his current role, extending that same procurement and transportation discipline into a broader multinational environment.
Across these roles, Harry’s work has moved steadily from operational logistics into strategic sourcing, with responsibilities spanning supplier selection, tendering, contract negotiation, and transportation network design. The cumulative arc of his career is one of increasing regional scope, increasing commercial responsibility, and a consistent focus on how logistics decisions affect cost, continuity, and service outcomes.
Core Expertise
Harry specializes in global supply chain, transportation sourcing, customs brokerage, and finished vehicle logistics. He is known for working in environments where service design and commercial terms are tightly linked, especially in automotive and cross-border transportation networks. His experience covers ocean, road, air, and rail movements, as well as the supplier and contract structures that support them.
A distinctive feature of Harry’s approach is his emphasis on tender discipline, market benchmarking, and contract structure. He evaluates lane-by-lane transportation demand, builds weighted selection criteria, and uses competitive RFQs to identify strategic suppliers. He also pays close attention to risk transfer, buffer capacity, damage liability, insurance coverage, and contingency planning, including dual-sourcing and long-term agreements that preserve business continuity.
Academia
Harry studied procurement and supply at the undergraduate level, earning an HND in procurement and supply. His early training was reinforced by practical exposure through internships connected to a government and Millennium Challenge Account partnership aimed at building procurement capability in Ghana.
He later studied freight forwarding with the Ghana Institute of Freight Forwarding, affiliated with FIATA, strengthening the technical foundation for his logistics career.
Harry is currently pursuing an Executive MBA at the University of Oxford. He has also earned professional credentials through the Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport, where he became a Chartered member of CILT UK, and the Chartered Institute of Procurement and Supply, where he became a Chartered professional and holds his MSIPS certification.
Key Perspectives that Harry Davies Shares on the Podcast
On the podcast, Harry argues that supply chain work should be understood as a collaborative system in which risk, cost, and service levels are shared across multiple parties. He stresses that procurement is no longer a purely transactional function, because resilience now depends on long-term supplier relationships, backup capacity, and structured contracts that can absorb disruption from tariffs, geopolitics, and demand spikes.
He also makes a strong case for practical rigor in sourcing. That means benchmarking market rates, understanding landed cost, using tender processes carefully, and aligning legal, commercial, and operational stakeholders before signing contracts. He sees AI as useful for research, supplier shortlisting, and pricing intelligence, but not as a substitute for judgment, execution, or the physical realities of moving goods.
A Quote from this Conversation with Harry Davies
“I think I’ll look at it from a logistics standpoint, right? Logistics gets as complex as it can get, right? A lot of times I keep asking myself, why am I in such a space? So if there’s one thing to anyone listening to this podcast that I would love to leave with you is I’d love to tell you that remember that you do not have control on a lot of things.
And so, some way, somehow, everything will fall in place. So take it a step a day at a time, and you will be fine. At the end of the day, it would all fall in place.”
