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As director of procurement and treasury at Sharp Electronics Corporation, Tami Rojas oversees corporate procurement, insurance, purchasing, sourcing, and treasury functions.
After over two decades of indirect and direct procurement, Rojas believes her profession offers unique opportunities to make a huge impact.
“I’m not a legal scholar, a finance whiz, or an amazing salesperson,” she says. “But with procurement, I drive the vision of the company by working with vendors to bring products, services, and third-party solutions. You’re part of this whole system to get the business moving forward.”
Part of that vision also includes a mindset shift to bring in more minority-, veteran-, and woman-owned businesses to work with. Rojas still has her responsibility to the bottom line, but she can “do good” from her seat at the table.
“Just to see this next group of professionals coming in and being excited to continue their learning is amazing.”
Tami Rojas
Doing good has been her focus at Sharp since joining the company in 2019. In addition to finding ways to do more with less and to drive efficiency in her department, she’s championed diversity and professional development causes. She served as cochair of Women Influencing Sharp’s Evolution, a group to help prepare women for leadership through professional development, networking, and other opportunities. For the past two years, Rojas has also participated in Sharp’s mentorship program. It’s been an honor, she says.
“Just to see this next group of professionals coming in and being excited to continue their learning is amazing. I feel like I get more from the mentees than they get from me,” she says. “It’s so important for businesses to look inside the pipeline to see the kind of leaders you’re developing and whether they are the folks who are going to bring the organization where you want to be.”
But what does it mean to Rojas to be a good mentor? It starts with getting a mentee to feel secure and safe. Psychological safety is essential to having a trusting mentor relationship; otherwise, you’ll never get past internal roadblocks. “Everybody can get to where they want to go, but something is often holding them back,” she explains. “You don’t know what that is if the mentee doesn’t feel safe.”
Rojas grew up in eastern Long Island, where she became intimately familiar with hard work.
“We were always working on the house, and we did all the work, inside and outside. I had to be the helper,” she says. “We didn’t have things like garbage pickup and needed to drive to the town dump to throw away our trash every week. I remember going with my dad, throwing garbage away. As a kid, you think it’s fun, but at the same time, it brings a sense of responsibility. You had to do these things because it wasn’t going to be done for you.”
While grit and determination came naturally to Rojas, the same couldn’t be said for her career interests. After graduating from St. Joseph’s University with her Bachelor of Science in international business, she started her career as a quality auditor for Symbol Technologies. She quickly realized that she didn’t want to spend her career in that area, so she began searching for a new path forward. That’s when she got an interview for a customer service job.
“You don’t have to be the smartest or most gifted, but you do have to be true.”
Tami Rojas
“When I showed up [to the interview], they told me [the role] had been filled,” she says. “However, they told me about an opening for an expediter position.”
That title rang bells for Rojas, whose dad had worked in operations for several years.
“I said sure, I’ll give it a try. I had no real purchasing experience or expediting experience,” she says. “More and more, I started to enjoy the work, and I didn’t want to do anything else.”
Whether you’re an aspiring professional or a mentor ushering in the next generation, Rojas has some valuable advice: “Just keep going forward.” She admits that she is someone who worries about everything, but there is a grounding force that reminds her that it’s going to be OK.
“Follow your instincts. Just keep going with where your heart and mind collide,” she advises. “Somehow that genuine part comes through, and people want to keep that around. You don’t have to be the smartest or most gifted, but you do have to be true.”
