Our education at AMS gave us the confidence to start our own company
Sylvie Wauters and Marie D’Haese further built on their expertise after completing the Master in Global Supply Chain Management at Antwerp Management School and gaining several years of professional experience by co-founding the company Upchained. With their shared vision on supply chains, they are now taking steps to create impact through entrepreneurship.
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Meet Sylvie en Marie, our alumni and co-founders of Upchained
The Master’s programs at Antwerp Management School are the ideal springboard for professionals who want to make a difference through leadership. Sylvie Wauters and Marie D’Haese took that ambition one step further. After completing their Master’s in Global Supply Chain Management at AMS and gaining several years of professional experience, they decided to start their own company: Upchained. Today, they combine expertise, vision, and entrepreneurial drive to create maximum impact in the world of supply chain management.
Before starting their master’s program at AMS, both Sylvie and Marie already held master’s degrees in Economics: a solid foundation for their specialization in Global Supply Chain Management, a field that had increasingly captured their interest. After graduating from AMS, they initially followed separate career paths while staying closely connected. Sylvie became a Supply Chain Consultant at Deloitte, while Marie joined Solvint, a supply chain company founded by an AMS professor.
“My role at Solvint was very operational and an excellent learning experience,” Marie explains. “But after two years I wanted to broaden my perspective. I found that opportunity at Capgemini Invent, where I learned to think more strategically and help clients design the supply chains of the future. What should they look like? Where should companies invest? Which technologies are critical?”
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Marie
The strategic way of thinking closely reflected the mindset encouraged during her studies at AMS, where students are challenged to think broadly and take leadership. After several years of professional experience, starting their own company felt like a natural next step. Together they founded Upchained within the Cronos Group, a large ecosystem of technology-driven startups and scale-ups.
“Cronos is a strong innovation-focused network. They immediately believed in our idea to combine strategy with concrete implementation to deliver smarter supply chain solutions.”
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Sylvie
Today, Upchained supports companies across a wide range of industries in optimizing and implementing their supply chains end-to-end, from procurement to digital transformation.
From theory to practice
Starting your own company is never easy, especially not in the complex field of supply chain management. For both Sylvie and Marie, their master’s program at AMS was an essential step in preparing for that challenge.
“My Master’s in Business Administration was very theoretical and broad, but not very deep,” Sylvie says. “Supply chains really interested me, but I realized I needed to deepen my expertise.”
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Sylvie
Marie experienced something similar during her earlier studies. “During my Master’s in Applied Economic Sciences, we had a logistics course taught by a professor who made the subject incredibly engaging. It suddenly made my studies very concrete, and I became fascinated by the topic. That’s when I realized I wanted to pursue it further. I also wanted to learn how to translate business ideas into real solutions and guide others. In other words, I was curious to learn how to grow my leadership footprint, as they say at AMS.”
In 2018, Sylvie and Marie began their Master at AMS, deliberately choosing the business school’s innovative and practical approach. While many master’s programs in Belgium focus heavily on theory, AMS places much stronger emphasis on connecting academic insights with real-world business challenges.
“That’s what I loved about AMS. We often started with concrete business cases, and the theory was explained through them. That immediately gives you insights and encourages you to think further.”
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Marie
The program’s social and practical dimension also closely mirrors the challenges graduates face later in their careers. During the program, Sylvie, Marie, and their classmates worked together on complex business cases. These projects required not only analytical thinking and creativity but also collaboration with people from different cultures and backgrounds.
“That’s not always easy,” Marie explains. “For example, attitudes toward women in leadership roles can vary depending on cultural background. But ultimately you learn to work together as one team and reach your goals. And that prepares you well for the realities of business.”
“Presentation skills are something universities rarely emphasize. At AMS, you regularly present to your classmates or larger groups, which prepares you for real professional situations.”
The courses themselves were also highly practical. Students learned, for example, how to negotiate from start to finish, gaining valuable insights from experienced professors. Sylvie and Marie still apply these insights today in procurement and consulting projects. Presentation skills were another important focus.
Breaking down silos every day
When Sylvie and Marie launched Upchained, their approach quickly attracted attention in the sector. Their connected way of working resonated strongly with companies facing complex supply chain challenges. In many organizations, departments still operate in silos, working alongside each other rather than together. Upchained helps companies break down those silos by analyzing available data, visualizing insights, and proposing end-to-end solutions that optimize entire supply chain processes. But technology and strategy alone are not enough.
“You can introduce a very sophisticated and expensive system into a company. But if the people who need to work with it every day don’t understand it or feel comfortable using it, the project will fail.”
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Sylvie
Through their international contacts and industry exposure during their studies at AMS, Sylvie and Marie quickly realized that every project is also fundamentally about people. They learned to look beyond assumptions, challenge their own perspectives, and continuously question how things can be improved. These skills still help them build their company today.
For ambitious leaders and courageous pioneers
For Sylvie and Marie, choosing Antwerp Management School was a logical step. They were both looking for an education that would not only provide deep expertise in supply chain management but also prepare them for real business challenges.
“At AMS, you gain insight into the real challenges companies face because those challenges are constantly discussed in class. You often start and end with a business question that comes directly from the field. That opens many doors, because companies know AMS and trust its approach.”
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Sylvie
An education at AMS is the ideal springboard to a career in which you can make a real impact, within your company, your sector, and the wider world. With Upchained, Sylvie and Marie have already demonstrated that a new initiative can successfully carve out its place in the market.
They have also shown that women can confidently claim their place in a sector traditionally dominated by men.
“You don’t see many women in the driver’s seat in supply chain management. Sometimes there are twelve men around the table, that’s simply the reality. It’s unusual, yes. But we don’t feel there is discrimination in this sector. If you create value for your clients, they listen. I think it’s more a matter of perception, that supply chain and logistics are seen as typical ‘male professions.’ We are proving the opposite, leadership is leadership. In that sense, we do feel a bit like pioneers.”
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Marie
Both Sylvie and Marie recently turned 30. They may be young entrepreneurs, but they know exactly what they want. And that’s something that AMS actively encourages. Students at AMS develop their own personal development plans, placing themselves firmly in the driver’s seat of their careers.
“Sometimes you are pushed out of your comfort zone,” Sylvie explains. “You discover your strengths and weaknesses through real challenges and personality tools such as DISC. That makes your development very intentional.”
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Sylvie
AMS gives students all the tools they need to become the best leaders they can be and to create the impact they want to have.
