Amazon and Total Quality Logistics (TQL) are among the 2019 winners of the American Logistics Aid Network’s Humanitarian Logistics Awards.
Disaster Relief by Amazon earned the Outstanding Contribution Award for leveraging its extensive services, operations and logistics technology to help advance the cause of effective and large-scale disaster relief. For instance, in the wake of Hurricane Dorian, the Disaster Relief by Amazon team mobilized two Amazon Air flights, full of tens of thousands of donated relief items such as tarps, buckets and water containers.
Total Quality Logistics also received an Outstanding Contribution Award for Moves that Matter, a program that provides funding to help nonprofits and businesses defray the cost of humanitarian shipments, as well as for TQL Cares, an in-house initiative that raises millions of dollars and contributes thousands of volunteer hours to various compassionate causes each year.
Nezih Altay of DePaul University received the Research and Academic Contributions Award for being one of the first U.S. academics to recognize the importance of applying operations research and supply chain management to the challenge of disaster relief. His 2006 paper, OR/MS Research in Disaster Operations Management, was one of the first papers to spark research in humanitarian logistics and remains the most cited article in its field.
Author and supply chain resilience expert Phil Palin received the Lifetime Achievement Award for his ongoing work to help government and businesses develop greater alignment when providing disaster relief. Over the years, he has worked closely with federal, state, local and private sector leaders to prepare for and respond to complex wide-area catastrophic events and served in a variety of capacities, most recently as the FEMA team leader for the supply chain Ecosystem Assessment. He has also authored numerous books and articles about supply chain resilience, including Out of the Whirlwind: Supply and Demand after Hurricane Maria.
“Each of these recipients is living proof that humanitarianism isn’t just a one-time event–and that true service extends well beyond a single disaster,” says Mark Richards, board chairman of the American Logistics Aid Network. “It truly is part of their corporate DNA and personal passion. We’re grateful to them for the many contributions they have made, and we are proud to recognize them.”
