2024 VMS Professionals 17th Annual Conference

Cynthia is Vice President and co-founder of VMS Professionals. VMS Professionals is a national user group founded in 2002 with over 300 corporate buyer members focused on the procurement of contingent labor.
Cynthia spent her career in contingent labor both as a supplier and a buyer. Prior to retiring in May 2021, Cynthia managed Allstate’s $130+ million contingent labor program and was responsible for contingent labor/external workforce across the enterprise, operation of the Fieldglass system and put together the Allstate contingent labor enterprise strategy. During her tenure at Allstate, Cynthia rebranded the program, drove supplier optimization, created strategies around MSP usage and implemented new Fieldglass functionality and integration with multiple systems. In addition, she worked to increase diversity spend within the program from 26% to 55%.
Prior to Allstate Cynthia spent six months creating Discover’s Supplier Diversity program, ran and completed multiple LEAN initiatives and managed Risk and Controls in Global Procurement. She originally joined Discover as the Sr. Manager for Professional Services Management in 2007. In that role her responsibilities included, managing a team responsible for all offshoring, consulting, staff augmentation vendor and engagement relationships. Successes included the implementation of a contractor tenure policy and overall program to mitigate co-employment risks across the organization, development of a non-employee policy to drive awareness of how resources should be leverage, centralization of all non-employee resources in the VMS tool which helped not only in identifying resources but identified savings opportunities and reduced risk as well as on boarding time by 80%.

Before Discover she was the Team Lead for Alternative Workforce at TransUnion where she was responsible for establishing Centralized Vendor Management at TransUnion LLC. She was instrumental in the selection and management of TransUnion’s web based vendor management system.

Prior to joining TransUnion, Cynthia was a successful co-owner of a consulting firm and performed sales, project and operations management for a variety of IT consulting and staffing organizations. As an account manager/area sales manager, Cynthia exceeded revenue and gross profits expectations on numerous occasions and received several sales awards for her efforts.
Today, Cynthia continues to lead VMS Professionals, consults with corporations on contingent labor and is engaged as a speaker at various conferences. When not working, Cynthia loves spending time with her grandchildren and loves to fish, camp, garden, read and cook.

Katie has been with Southwest since 2017 and has been working in the contingent labor space since 2019. She serves as the Program Manager for SWA Staffers, Southwest’s contingent labor program. SWA Staffers is an internal MSP with a large focus on Direct Sourcing. Outside of work she loves taking advantage of her flight benefits by traveling to National Parks, baseball stadiums and exploring new destinations!

Karen A. Wilson
Retired President/CEO, MAKE Corporation
Founder, VMS Professionals
Board Member, Special Olympics Illinois and Feed My Starving Children

Karen was President/CEO of MAKE Corporation, a professional staffing and solutions organization with locations in Chicago and Dallas until her retirement in September of 2022 at the time of the sale of MAKE Corporation to DISYS. Over the course of her career, Karen established herself at the forefront of contingent workforce management through her thought leadership and IT services industry involvement.

VMS Professionals is an example of that thought leadership and was formed in 2003 as a vehicle for companies who strategically use contingent workforce to network and share best practices with their peers. VMS Professionals was acquired by DISYS as part of the MAKE acquisition and DISYS intends to continue and expand the mission of advancing the staffing industry through establishing best practices in the acquisition and management of contingent labor.
Karen is now happily retired and enjoying time with family, friends and travel.