Inteligistics, a perishable supply chain technology company, has promoted Lawrence Mallia to vice president of AI strategy and product solutions and hired Manjusha Sunkavalli as a data scientist.
The company, which uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to optimize cold chain performance for growers, shippers, distributors and retail grocers, says these moves reflect its deepening commitment to AI as a core driver of produce industry value.
“As the produce industry faces increasing pressure around labor, cost, sustainability and quality, AI is emerging not as a future concept — but as a practical tool to drive measurable improvements across the entire cold chain,” says Inteligistics CEO Gary Fleming.
Mallia is a long-tenured Inteligistics team member who previously served as vice president of digital transformation. His background spans supply chain technology, digital operations and enterprise software strategy. In his prior role as vice president of digital transformation, he led the company’s efforts to modernize how growers, shippers and distributors capture and act on operational data across the perishable supply chain.
In his new role, Mallia will now oversee how Inteligistics embeds and scales AI capabilities across its product portfolio.
“The produce industry has always operated on instinct and experience,” Mallia says. “What we are doing now is pairing that knowledge with the analytical power of AI to give growers, shippers and distributors a level of predictability and precision that was simply not possible before. This is not about replacing expertise — it is about amplifying it.”
Sunkavalli brings more than five years of experience in data engineering, business intelligence and applied machine learning, having worked across the healthcare, insurance and research sectors. She holds a Master of Science in data science from the University of New Haven, where she also served as a research assistant, publishing work in AI, deep learning, traffic forecasting and interpretable machine learning.
At Inteligistics, Sunkavalli is currently applying AI and advanced analytics to operational data from Inteligistics’ customers to transform it into actionable insights that will improve decision-making and operational performance. The company says she is uncovering patterns and identifying bottlenecks that could lead to substantial improvements and optimizing core cooling processes — work that is expected to reduce energy consumption and maximize throughput for precooling operations.
“There is an enormous amount of signal in the data that cold chain facilities generate every day,” Sunkavalli says. “My focus is on turning that signal into models that help operators make faster, smarter decisions — whether that is knowing exactly when to pull product from a cooler or anticipating an equipment issue before it disrupts a shipment.”
