“Do It Right the First Time.”

Melissa Bohannon is a seasoned global executive whose career has been defined by solving complex operational challenges, strengthening international supply chains, and helping organizations navigate the intersection of global commerce, regulatory compliance, logistics, and business growth. With more than 40 years of professional experience, she has built a career spanning oil and gas, energy, engineering, petrochemicals, international transportation, freight forwarding, customs brokerage, and major capital projects. Her leadership philosophy is captured in a straightforward personal motto: “Do it right the first time.” That principle reflects the accountability, preparation, integrity, and operational discipline she has brought to organizations throughout her career.

Melissa’s professional journey began in international project logistics, where she developed an understanding of how operational decisions made in one part of the world can affect schedules, costs, regulatory exposure, and customers thousands of miles away. During more than a decade with JGC (USA), she managed North American logistics and compliance activities for engineering, petrochemical, and nuclear projects while becoming a specialist in heavy and oversized transportation. Her responsibilities took her internationally, including project visits to Japan, Indonesia, and Germany, and required her to coordinate complex transportation across air, ocean, rail, and road. These experiences established the global perspective that would become a defining characteristic of her career.

Melissa subsequently advanced into senior leadership positions within the freight forwarding and customs brokerage industry. At Panalpina, she helped develop a center-led logistics and customer service organization while drafting bids and negotiating transportation contracts for major engineering, procurement, and construction companies. Under her leadership responsibilities, annual gross revenues associated with the department grew from approximately $2 million to $30 million. She later served as Vice President at Rulewave, where she managed its Global Project Department and supported major power-generation projects in Ghana valued at more than $100 million, delivering projects under budget and ahead of schedule with no client cargo losses.

Her career then expanded deeply into corporate trade compliance and energy sector leadership at Baker Hughes. Beginning in export compliance and progressing to Global Export Licensing and Compliance Manager, Melissa managed complex regulatory requirements involving controlled equipment, software, technology, sanctions, and international market entry. A significant part of her work involved supporting Baker Hughes’ mobilization into Libya following changes to U.S. sanctions. She managed export licensing requirements and traveled to Libya to conduct a physical inventory of products and software discovered in country after sanctions were lifted. During her time there, Melissa also provided trade compliance training to local employees who had not previously received such instruction due to the sanctions. Beyond this work, she contributed to corporate compliance policy, global trade lane strategy, SAP related trade and logistics initiatives, and the implementation of trade compliance technology, strengthening the organization’s ability to operate effectively within complex global regulatory environments.

Melissa’s leadership reached an even broader global scale at Weatherford International. As Director of Logistics and Global Supply Chain/Trade Compliance, she led an eight-region international logistics organization operating within a matrix environment of more than 50,000 employees across more than 120 countries and influencing over $700 million in global logistics spend. She helped establish global standards, consolidated freight-forwarder and customs-broker networks, negotiated major global transportation agreements, and advanced technology initiatives designed to improve transportation and supply-chain visibility. Her work generated substantial, auditable financial impact, including $37.5 million in global savings in 2012, more than $59 million in 2013, and $63.3 million in 2014.

As Weatherford’s Director of Trade Compliance, Melissa brought the same disciplined approach to regulatory and geopolitical risk. Her responsibilities encompassed cross-border movements in more than 80 countries as well as sanctions, technology transfers, export and import licensing, classification, denied-party screening, third-party due diligence, valuation, free trade agreements, and country-of-origin requirements. She developed global trade standards and training, managed OFAC and BIS licenses, advised the organization on changing tariff environments, and helped oversee trade automation and compliance systems. Her team’s work received industry recognition when Weatherford’s Trade Compliance Team was named a Highly Recommended Export Controls Team by the Worldwide ERC, while the company’s Global Compliance organization received Corporate Compliance recognition from Texas Lawyer.

Melissa also brings significant experience navigating complex regulatory investigations and strengthening corporate trade compliance frameworks. During her time with Weatherford and Baker Hughes, both organizations were subject to active investigations by the U.S. Department of the Treasury and the Bureau of Industry and Security related to alleged compliance violations. Melissa was part of the teams responsible for developing and implementing stronger compliance programs that became integral components of each company’s trade compliance framework. These enhanced controls were accepted by the relevant government agencies and contributed to the organizations’ eventual settlement agreements, providing Melissa with valuable firsthand experience in regulatory remediation, compliance transformation, and risk management.

Melissa later brought her experience to some of the energy industry’s most complex capital-project logistics challenges. As Logistics Manager supporting Baker Hughes equipment for the Venture Global Calcasieu Pass LNG project, she served as the single point of contact for global transportation activities involving more than $120 million in transportation spend and more than 1,500 shipments, including over 900 imports. Her responsibilities ranged from oversized and overweight transportation and marine logistics to customs, insurance, vendor coordination, site delivery, emergency planning, and transportation cost control. A comprehensive review of tariff classifications also identified approximately $22 million in potential duty savings through reclassification, illustrating her ability to connect technical compliance expertise directly to meaningful financial outcomes.

Her approach to leadership is perhaps best demonstrated when circumstances become difficult. Melissa has coordinated the rerouting and temporary storage of shipments during hurricane-related site closures, managed staged restarts of project deliveries, and resolved customs disruptions without allowing isolated problems to become larger operational failures. In one notable situation, she coordinated the securing, re-export, fumigation, re-importation, and eventual delivery of cargo seized because of insect infestation, avoiding the need to return the shipment to Italy and helping recover associated costs through insurance. Experiences such as these have strengthened her ability to assess risk quickly, bring multiple stakeholders together, and protect both project schedules and financial outcomes.

Most recently, Melissa served with Amalie Trade Compliance Consultants, where she progressed through several leadership and advisory roles, including Senior Advisory Consultant, Vice President of Managed Services, and, for the majority of her tenure, Vice President of Trade Solutions. In these capacities, she advised clients on international trade compliance and managed import activities associated with major capital projects. Her work included developing customized trade compliance programs, managing BIS license and CCATS applications, helping clients navigate changing tariff conditions, leading CTPAT reviews and validations, and providing compliance education and strategic guidance. These roles allowed Melissa to translate decades of enterprise experience into practical, informed counsel for organizations navigating increasingly complex international trade and regulatory environments.

Across her career, Melissa has developed expertise extending well beyond traditional logistics. Her professional capabilities encompass supply chain management, international trade, customs regulations, import and export compliance, transportation management, procurement, strategic sourcing, operations management, contract negotiation, risk assessment, supply-chain optimization, and trade compliance. Her experience with systems including SAP, JDE, and trade-automation technology further enables her to understand both the strategic and technological dimensions of modern global operations.

Melissa has also contributed to her profession by sharing what she has learned with others. She has spoken at Hanson Wade Supply Chain and Compliance Conferences, American Conference Institute conferences, DHL Energy Conferences, BDP International Supply Chain Conferences, and the Advanced Topics in Customs Compliance Conference. Her experience as both an operational leader and industry speaker enables her to communicate highly technical subjects in ways that connect compliance requirements with their practical implications for executives, project teams, suppliers, and other stakeholders.

Now entering a new chapter of her professional life, Melissa is particularly interested in bringing her experience to boards and advisory roles where she can help growing organizations make better decisions. Having stepped away from the demands of a traditional full-time corporate role, she has the capacity and motivation to contribute more directly to businesses seeking experienced guidance. She is especially interested in oil and gas, energy, logistics, and adjacent industries and sees a strong fit with smaller companies seeking to scale, professionalize operations, expand internationally, strengthen supply chains, or manage increasing regulatory complexity.

For an emerging or growth-oriented company, Melissa offers perspective developed from operating at both ends of the business spectrum: she understands the practical details required to move a critical shipment across a border, but she also understands how global policies, multimillion-dollar contracts, enterprise systems, regulatory decisions, and supply-chain strategies affect an organization as a whole. That combination makes her particularly valuable when leadership teams must balance growth with governance, opportunity with risk, and speed with operational discipline. Her global experience allows her to anticipate issues that may be unfamiliar to organizations entering new markets while helping management establish scalable processes before complexity becomes a constraint.

Beyond her professional accomplishments, Melissa brings a pragmatic and grounded outlook to leadership. She values preparation, accountability, sound processes, and completing work correctly rather than creating unnecessary problems that must later be repaired. Away from business, she enjoys gardening—an interest that fittingly reflects patience, consistency, and an appreciation for creating the right conditions for sustainable growth. Whether advising a management team, assessing an operational challenge, or contributing at the board level, Melissa approaches responsibility with the same principle that has guided her throughout her career: do it right the first time.

Character:
Melissa leads with accountability, integrity, resilience, and a strong sense of personal responsibility for outcomes. Her “do it right the first time” philosophy reflects a career-long commitment to disciplined execution, thoughtful preparation, and protecting the organizations and stakeholders who depend on her judgment.

Knowledge:
She possesses deep knowledge of global supply chains, logistics, international transportation, trade compliance, customs, sanctions, import and export controls, and complex energy-sector operations. Decades of experience across corporate, consulting, freight-forwarding, project, and regulatory environments allow her to connect technical requirements with their broader operational and financial consequences.

Strategic:
Melissa combines hands-on operational knowledge with the ability to think at enterprise scale, having influenced hundreds of millions of dollars in global logistics spend while delivering substantial cost savings and managing complex international risk. She is particularly effective at identifying opportunities to improve processes, reduce costs, strengthen governance, and build scalable systems that support sustainable growth.

Communication:
An experienced communicator who has trained professionals and business leaders and presented at industry conferences on supply-chain and compliance topics. She can translate highly technical regulatory and operational issues into practical business considerations, enabling executives, project teams, and stakeholders to make informed decisions with greater confidence.