Avery Jaffe ’25

Avery Jaffe came to LeBow unsure about her career direction. As she worked toward a BSBA with a marketing major, co-op work in the procurement field and active extracurricular participation helped her to crystalize her vision.

Of her four co-op experiences, a stint with Lockheed Martin delivered a particularly clear sense of direction. “It taught me a lot about the general procurement process: how to work with suppliers, and how to build relationships with them,” she says. That helped her to see where she wanted to go.

Today she’s working as a procurement professional in software sourcing at IBM. In that role, she identifies and purchases software both for IBM’s internal use and for its consulting clients.

“We do a lot with contracts, compliance and sourcing strategy. We also do a lot of data analytics for suppliers, tracking savings,” she says. “The role is equal parts strategy, communication and — honestly — detective work. It requires a lot of persistence, resourcefulness and collaboration.”

What does that mean in practical terms? Jaffe helps, for example, to chase down software that integrates with IBM’s Artificial Intelligence platform, Watson X. Internal engineers use those AI tools to accelerate their own software-development efforts.

On the external side, “IBM is the main sponsor for the Master’s golf tournament,” she says. “We buy the software that goes into all of the technology that’s used during the Master’s Tournament.”

All this requires a broad mix of skills around contracts, compliance, negotiation and analytics. Often, Jaffe says, the person requesting the software “will tell you a little bit about what we’re using it for, but you also have to do your own investigations of the company itself, like if we’ve had previous contracts with them. We have to bring those terms up to date in order to match our compliance and safety requirements.”

LeBow coursework and co-op experience both helped her to build up those skills, and her extracurricular involvement as an undergraduate likewise positioned her for career success.

In procurement, “the largest part of getting these types of jobs is building your presence on LinkedIn and within the community of supply chain professionals,” she says, adding that serving on the executive board of the Drexel Supply Chain Management Association, a student organization, “helped me a lot with networking and with building my brand.”

That organization helped to open doors and put Jaffe in contact with industry professionals. “I was able to constantly get in front of people who were very seasoned in their careers, and they were able to give me really great advice,” she says. “That is ultimately what helped me get this job.”

Even as she pursued her studies and her various co-op opportunities, Jaffe stayed engaged with an early passion. She’d been recruited to Drexel to play lacrosse and that experience, too, has served to set her up for success.

“Being a Division I athlete helped a lot with just my work ethic and with discipline,” she says. “Discipline can’t be just taught in a classroom, and you can’t just learn it in one day. It’s really a lifestyle.”