MEET YOUR TEAM

Jeff Stewart has always had an entrepreneurial spirit and a flair for working well in chaos. Jeff has spent the past 20 years in various sales management and leadership roles; ten years in the financial sector, and the past ten years in logistics brokerage. He’ll tell you his favorite part of his job is watching others grow but building relationships and finding solutions to tough challenges also bring intrinsic reward.  When Jeff isn’t working, he enjoys spending time with his young daughter and son and his most amazing wife. He enjoys golfing very much, fishing and camping.

In October 2018, Mike Rosenberg was the first to take the leap of faith and join the Portage team. Mike has been in the logistics industry for over 15 years and has tremendous exposure to corporate logistics brokerage; beginning in sales and moving into management in 2012. He is extremely likeable and incredibly dependable, so naturally he thrives in relationship-building and leadership. He enjoys spending time with his wife and kids. When he’s not driving his kids all over town for their sporting activities, he’s likely to be playing basketball, football, or golf. Mike says he is beyond excited to be part of this team and truly appreciates the customers and carriers and the team he gets to work with every day here.

Mike Studnicka came from a corporate 3PL and has nine years of experience in logistics and operations. His customer service skills are top-notch because he genuinely enjoys talking with just about anyone and helping people. Mike looks forward to weekend hiking and camping trips with his wife and daughter, and their dog. He also is a fan in the stands at many Vikings football games. Mike is super handy and is always working on some DIY project. He radiates positivity and is great to have around the office.

Phil Fladager is an Operations Account Specialist on our team and a very easy guy to get along with! Although he’s just a year and a half into the transportation industry, he’s spent 15 years in customer-service positions and seven of those years in management. Him and his wife have been married for eight years and have two daughters in elementary school. Phil enjoys spending time with his family and friends, and any traveling and golfing he gets to do.

Paul Sampica, one of our Account Operations Specialists, has brought us 17 years of experience as an Account Executive in the food brokerage industry, where he worked on the supply chain shipment scheduling & monitoring of his account sales. His time outside of work is spent with his wife and daughter. Paul enjoys practicing Jiu-Jitsu and watching his daughter train in gymnastics.

John Slater joined us as an Account Development Manager with over 16 years of transportation and logistics experience. His career started at a non-asset-based trucking and logistics company where he spent ten years in operations, account management & procurement. He then spent four years at a large retailer learning the customer side of fulfillment in an operations leadership role, and then as a Project Manager. Prior to joining Portage, John spent two years at a global 3PL leading a team of carrier account managers. John and his wife live in Eden Prairie, MN and have two young children and a dog. John enjoys being outdoors, is an avid hockey player, and likes to golf, whenever possible.

Rob Spang is our Business Development Manager. Rob has 14 years of retail management experience and has been cross-training to familiarize himself with our operations. Rob spends his free time with wife of 14 years and their two daughters, and their dog. They like being outside and going to the beach, or taking their kids to new parks, and having fun with neighborhood friends. Rob also likes to golf, and we saw at the last Top Golf Portage party that he has a pretty good swing!

Lindsey Stewart joined Portage in the spring of 2021 and heads up back-end processes to support the team. Process and organization have always been her superpower, so operations and administrative positions have been a natural fit throughout her career. Lindsey also has quite a bit of marketing experience, and really loves the parts in her position at Portage that allow for the creative to flow. She and her husband Jeff live in Plymouth with their two children, one in elementary, and one in pre-k. She is happy spending most of her free time with them, but she also enjoys socializing, gardening, designing, and reading.

Andy has been involved in supply chain, logistics and warehousing since the late 1990’s when he was hired by one of the nation’s largest kosher food distributors. Born out of a desire to master his craft, he immersed himself in all facets of the industry. He worked in warehouse management, transportation, and product procurement, and moved to customer-facing retail sales where he developed a POS software solution that drove sales company-wide. He even acquired his CDL to assist with in-town and long-haul OTR deliveries during the busy season. After fifteen years and a lot of friendships, Andy decided to narrow his focus on the Transportation Procurement sector.

He started working at a large 3PL where Jeff, the co-founder of Portage Logistics was working at the time, hired him to be on his team. Andy found he had an aptitude and a liking to specialty trucking such as over dimensional, super loads, modular buildings, and all things unordinary.

It was in that environment that he discovered there is a major gap in the industry. International shippers and freight forwarders need competent and cost-effective domestic drayage, transloading and warehousing services. Competent and low-cost providers of these services are struggling to find consistent shipments. Through ingenuity, innovation, hard work and experience, Andy has developed and perfected a system using a unique set of processes that has been closing this gap. In the drayage community and amongst his network, he has become an industry expert.

Andy joined our team here at the end of 2022, and we are proud to have him as part of the Portage family, finally, where he belongs!