Julie Swift is a Woman Who Means Business

Julie Swift likes to say her title should be Sprinkler of Happy Dust. That’s partly because her title has changed several times since Swift joined Waypoint in January 2018. But also because she spends a lot of time investing in people, her clients and her professional relationships. Sprinkling happy dust is her preferred method of connection, her best sales tool and part of who Swift is. Her eyes twinkle from behind large tortoise shell frames and her blond hair spills down to her shoulders in loose curls. She’s quick to laugh and quicker to tell you a story in her Texas twang that has persisted despite living in the Ozarks for almost 30 years.

“I’ve just always loved the food industry,” says Swift, 60, who is a vice president at Waypoint. The Florida-based food service broker acts as a middleman between food manufacturers and food service providers. Swift’s first job in the industry, however, was decidedly less glamorous. She worked in the deli at a national grocery store chain, where she cut mold off cheese and re-wrapped it. When she asked to join the company’s management training program, she was told she didn’t have the right experience. She switched roles and asked again. That’s when the district manager more or less told her the company didn’t choose women for the program because they get pregnant. Within a year, Swift had joined her family’s grocery store before starting at a food broker in Dallas, where she eventually ran a sales team.

In the early 1990s, her husband got a job in Springfield, and the family relocated. At the time, The French’s Food Co. was hiring a marketing manager. Having never graduated college, Swift lacked the position’s education requirements. Her husband convinced her to apply anyway. Confidence regained, she waited in the lobby until she could hand her resume directly to the hiring manager. “I looked her right in the eyes and said, ‘I really think you want to talk to me about this position,’” Swift says. Nine interviews later, she got the job and spent the next decade or so in marketing.

Those years taught her a different side of selling and helped develop her strategic and analytical skills. Then, a position opened in sales at French’s. Swift joined the food service leadership team as director of business development. “We took a channel within food service that we knew was very underdeveloped, and then we developed it out to be the fastest growing channel in the [food service division].” And by we, Swift really means she. Sales for the non-commercial channel grew more than tenfold under Swift’s command. Not every decision she made in her 25-year tenure at French’s was successful, but on the whole, she shined. So much so, that in 2017, when McCormick & Co. bought French’s, Swift was offered a position to stay on. It was a tough decision, but Swift declined. “My little voice over here knew that it wasn’t the right fit for me at the time and that I didn’t feel like I could reach my full potential if I stayed,” she says.