Dr. Janaina (Jane) Siegler ran her own business in Brazil for sixteen years, earned her PhD between São Paulo and Indiana, and has taught thousands of students in Brazil, the United States, Europe and India. Today, she is a tenured associate professor of supply chain analytics at Butler University and an advisor to companies and governments. Her work turns research on disruption, tariffs and sustainability into practical next steps for the companies, governments and classrooms she works with.
She ran a business before she studied one, so she starts from the decision you have to make, not from a model she wants to use. She started consulting in Brazil in 2005 and has advised organizations in the U.S. since 2016.
Find where your exposure really sits: second and third tiers, single sources, tariff paths and cluster dependencies.
Done before: mapped the supply networks of 40 Indiana manufacturers, covering 21,000 sites; studied the state’s defense and semiconductor supply chains; analyzed supplier risk for global manufacturers.
Talks and hands-on sessions on what is changing in supply chains, and what leaders should do about it on Monday.
Done before: an expert panel on Capitol Hill, three Morris Series keynotes at Lilly Corporate Center, a roundtable at the Indiana Global Economic Summit, keynotes at Concordia College and at universities in Brazil, and an educator panel reaching 350+ faculty in 48 countries.
Bring a real problem to a research team or to students who will work it hard, with rigor and a deadline.
Done before: applied research with global manufacturers, live consulting projects for 10+ client organizations through Butler’s MBA program, 12 student case-competition teams she coached, and the international research network she chairs, the Supply Chain 4.0 Network.
Her doctoral research asked a simple question: when something happens to one company, why and how does it reach the others? She borrowed the physics of a skipping stone. Each touch of the water makes its own ripple, and the ripples meet, amplify or fade.
She tested it in the field: 131 interviews and 22 site visits across 52 firms in Brazil’s cosmetics industry, in six supply chains of up to seven tiers. That lens still shapes everything she does, from tariff exposure to how a classroom decision in Indiana lands somewhere else.
How shocks travel through multi-tier networks, and how firms build the capability to absorb them.
Tariff uncertainty, US–China trade, reshoring and nearshoring, and what they mean for Midwest manufacturers.
Why industries gather where they do, from Bavaria’s automotive cluster to Indiana’s supplier base.
Measuring what matters instead of what is easy, so sustainability claims hold up to the numbers.
From her first classroom in Uberlândia to a trade delegation in Seoul: where she has studied, taught, researched and presented. Each pin is a place where the work happened. Tap or hover for what it was.
“To teach business to future business leaders, one must engage with the business, both in our backyard and around the world.”
Dr. Siegler’s teaching philosophy
Dr. Siegler has taught since 2003, first in Brazil, then in Kentucky, Indiana, India and on programs abroad. Simulations, plant tours, live client projects and a weekly Supply Chain News Lab, across undergraduate, MBA and MS Business Analytics courses. She proposed Butler’s undergraduate Supply Chain major and now leads it. It launched in 2025, and 27 students chose it in its first year.
Dr. Siegler spent sixteen years running her own business in Brazil, the last five of them while also teaching. Since then her work has been inside universities, in Brazil and in the United States: a PhD at FGV in São Paulo with two years at Indiana University, and Butler since 2018, where a major she proposed was turned down and then launched six years later. Doctoral examinations at UFMG, UFU and UNICAMP keep her close to how Brazilian graduate programs work.
Her master’s thesis on the internationalization of higher education is still used as a framework throughout Brazil, with publications on the topic since 2008. Putting it to work: seven faculty-led programs abroad, research partners in five countries and the international research network she chairs.
Live client projects for 10+ organizations, plant tours with companies such as Toyota, Subaru, Amazon and FedEx, and supply chain simulations, as a certified trainer.
A GenAI article in the International Journal of Production Research, AI teaching tools for simulation courses, and an international educator panel on AI in supply chain teaching.
The undergraduate Supply Chain major: proposed in 2019, turned down, each concern answered, and launched in 2025 with 27 students in its first year.
Most of what she has built at Butler started as a proposal, and some of it started as a proposal that was turned down. Here is what exists now.
Designed from her first day at Butler in 2018 as a global supply chain analytics program, not supply chain management alone. The first full proposal, in 2019, was turned down. The major launched in 2025 as a three-year trial, and 27 students chose it in its first year. She leads it.
Launched in 2025, and she leads it.
Seven faculty-led student programs abroad, in Ireland, Germany, Czechia, Panama, the UK and France. A new undergraduate program in Brazil follows in summer 2027.
Chair of the Supply Chain 4.0 Network, 48 researchers in 12 countries. President of the network’s conference, ISSC4, in 2019, when Butler hosted it, and again for 2025–2028.
Butler’s representative and author of the delegation’s report for the dean. Now planning a symposium for Korean suppliers with World Trade Center Indianapolis.
Co-chair of Sustainability in the Curriculum. Lead of the International Sustainability Fellows funded by the McKinney Family Foundation, with partners in Brazil, Scotland and the US.
Board of Directors, The International Center, Indianapolis, 2026–2028.
Dr. Siegler grew up in Uberlândia, Minas Gerais, and ran her own business there for sixteen years. The questions she had as an operator became her research, and she still brings the operator and the researcher into every room. Read her full CV (PDF)
Research returns to her classroom as teaching material the same year it is written.
New programs, new tools and a startup of her own: she builds things, then measures whether they work.
Connecting students and research to the firms, clusters and investors that run local and global supply chains.
Send a note about what you are working on: consulting, a keynote, a research collaboration or a student project. She reads every message herself and replies personally.