Memphis Logistics Summit

Private networking event for senior leaders across logistics, advanced manufacturing, and infrastructure.

A brief look at Memphis’ role as America’s logistics crossroads and why the next decade will be defined by how we move goods, data, and energy.

Speaker: 
Gwyn Fisher, Chief Economic Development Officer, Greater Memphis Chamber

The Next Era of Logistics Leadership

A forward-looking perspective on how logistics leaders must evolve in a world defined by volatility, technology acceleration, and rising customer expectations.

AI in Motion — From Hype to Hard ROI

AI has moved beyond experimentation. This session focuses on where it is delivering measurable results today, with leaders sharing real-world deployments that are improving efficiency, visibility, and decision-making across logistics networks. Discussion will cover proven use cases in routing, warehousing, and forecasting; integrating AI into legacy systems; data quality and interoperability challenges; workforce implications; and where investors see real value in the supply chain.

Speakers:
Carl Schultz, IMC
Chase Rainwater, University of Arkansas
Sabya Mishra, University of Memphis

The Intelligent Supply Chain — Designing for Volatility

Supply chains are being redesigned in real time as companies balance resilience, cost, and speed in an unpredictable global environment. This session explores how AI and advanced analytics are enabling more adaptive, predictive network strategies, covering nearshoring and reshoring realities, AI-driven scenario modeling and digital twins, inventory optimization, regulatory compliance at AI scale, and balancing redundancy with efficiency.

Speakers:
Regan Watson, Barnhart Crane & Rigging
Joel Tracy, IMC
TBD, Bank of America
Will Reid, Tennessee Department of Transportation

Multimodal Advantage — Physical Networks Meet Digital Intelligence

The future of logistics lies in seamlessly integrating river, rail, road, and runway with real-time digital intelligence. This session examines how companies are orchestrating multimodal networks—exploring AI-enabled routing across transportation modes, real-time visibility and control towers, infrastructure coordination challenges, implications for autonomous systems, and the data gaps that still limit performance across modes.

Speakers:
Janine Mansour, Port NOLA
Louis Terdan, Northwest Seaport Alliance
TBD, FedEx
Earnie Nichols, University of Memphis
TBD, Zapata Quantum

Networking & Ask Me Anything

“What’s Actually Keeping Logistics CEOs Up at Night?”

Speakers:
Donald Grayer, IMC
Kelly Lomax, Dunavant Global Logistics
Jeff Brittain, University of Memphis
Mason George, IMC

The Infrastructure Behind the Algorithm

As logistics becomes more digital, infrastructure demands are shifting rapidly, from roads and bridges to power, fiber, and compute capacity. This session explores what must be built next to support both physical movement and data driven operations, including power and grid capacity for AI and data centers, fiber and connectivity, site readiness, public-private coordination, and how logistics leaders can capitalize on the emerging supply chain of AI itself.

Speakers:
Dan Palme, Tennessee Department of Transportation
Commissioner Willie Simmons, Mississippi Department of Transportation
Jacquelyn Schirmer, Congruex

Rewiring the Industrial Economy: Transforming Legacy Infrastructure into What’s Next

In an era where data is the most critical asset, logistics leaders face the daunting challenge of modernizing massive, legacy networks and inventing entirely new value streams. Tony Kreager will discuss how to foster an environment of continuous innovation, illustrating how leveraging the edge of AI can not only optimize internal operations — as demonstrated by the success of FedEx Dataworks — but fundamentally change how the broader industrial economy anticipates and responds to disruption. Ultimately, this paradigm shift has the potential to rewrite the global economy.

Speaker:
Tony Kreager, FedEx

Inside the Rise of Cargo Theft — A National Security & Supply Chain Threat

Cargo theft is no longer opportunistic—it is organized, data-driven, and rapidly increasing. This session provides a rare inside look at how criminal networks are targeting supply chains and what companies must do to protect their operations, including how these networks have evolved, the convergence of cyber and physical threats, high-risk nodes in the supply chain, and practical prevention and response strategies.

Speaker:
FBI Cargo Theft Task Force — Senior Leader

Speaker:
Duncan Williams, Chairman, Greater Memphis Chamber