Trilce Encarnacion, an assistant professor of supply chain management and analytics at the University of Missouri–St. Louis, was recently elected to a leadership position with the Production and Operations Management Society. (Photo by Derik Holtmann)
Trilce Encarnacion has long been fascinated with research, particularly in the areas of logistics and crisis management.
That passion pushed Encarnacion into leaving a comfortable career path for an uncertain future in a new country. It led her to a tenure track position at the University of Missouri–St. Louis. And it landed Encarnacion on the leadership board of one of the leading international organizations representing the interests of professionals in the production and operations management field.
An assistant professor of supply chain management and analytics at the Ed G. Smith College of Business at UMSL, Encarnacion was recently elected as the Regional Vice President of the Americas for the Production and Operations Management Society. Encarnacion officially began her three-year term in February, and in the role, she will represent members across Latin America on the organization’s governing board while helping expand regional engagement, strengthen academic and industry connections and contribute to shaping its global strategy.
“I have a lot of connections throughout Latin America, and I do research with colleagues throughout the Americas,” said Encarnacion, who finished her first major event in the position during the 36th Annual POMS Conference May 7-11. “So I will be able to liaise with the local chapters, promote the great research being done and provide support for all of the important work that we do.”
A native of the Dominican Republic, Encarnacion earned an undergraduate degree in engineering at Pontificia Universidad Católica Madre y Maestra in her home country, then received a master’s in scientific computing at the University of Puerto Rico-Mayaguez. She began building an impressive resume with a variety of consulting and management positions in the Dominican Republic including systems engineer for the Supreme Court of Justice and functional specialist for the National Ministry of Economics, Planning and Development. However, Encarnacion said she realized that her true calling was in research, and if she was going to build a career in that field, she knew she had to take a big step.
“The truth is that in the DR, there were no places to have a career in research,” Encarnacion said. “It’s a developing country, so I could not have the job that I wanted.”
Encarnacion decided to pursue a PhD in transportation engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in upstate New York, which she received in 2019. While at a workshop for PhD students near the end of her studies, Encarnacion made a rather random yet fortuitous connection with a pair of UMSL students, who were presenting findings of their research.
“I was impressed,” Encarnacion said, “and I thought, ‘OK, I would like to go to a school that has PhD students like them, because I would like to train people like them.’”
UMSL was equally impressed by Encarnacion, who began applying for jobs a few months after that workshop. Coincidentally enough, the first offer Encarnacion received was from UMSL, and it didn’t take long for her to realize it was the right place.
“Not all business schools let you work with PhD students at the assistant professor level right away,” said Encarnacion, who joined UMSL in August 2020. “That was an opportunity that I saw here, and that was a big draw. And then also throughout the interview process, I could tell that the department was really connected to the local community and to local businesses, and that was also a big draw. So, those were the things that brought me here.”
Encarnacion would immediately join the Production and Operations Management Society, in which members are organized into specialized “colleges” or focused communities built around key areas of operations and supply chain management that foster collaboration, support research and help shape conference programming and scholarly activity across the field. Encarnacion was elected as secretary of the College of Humanitarian Operations and Crisis Management soon after joining, and she has remained very active in that group.
“It’s a very good fit for my research,” she said. “Researchers in humanitarian operations gather every year, and it’s a really great community that gets together and sees what everybody is working on.”
Since arriving at UMSL, Encarnacion has quickly established herself as a prolific researcher and collaborator, publishing work on supply chain resilience, humanitarian logistics and crisis management while mentoring doctoral students and building partnerships across the Americas. She has presented research at major conferences and has connected UMSL to an international network of scholars tackling real-world operational challenges, from disaster response to transportation systems. Those opportunities to teach, conduct meaningful research and collaborate with colleagues around the world have only reinforced that she made the right decision in coming to St. Louis.
“This is my dream job,” she said. “I’m counting myself fortunate every day that this is what I get to do.”
