Your resume is polished. Your LinkedIn is updated. You're ready to make connections at AFA Leaders Conference. Right? Not so fast! Before you shake hands with your next potential employer, your resume and LinkedIn may have already made a first impression. And with hundreds of industry professionals attending AFA Leaders Conference, you want that impression to be a good one.

Hello! My name is Kayla Brown, and I live in Plattsmouth, Nebraska, with my husband, Andrew, our 4-year-old son, Bennett, and our field golden, Ivy. I grew up on a family farm in Tipton, Missouri, and I currently work as an Import Specialist for Merck Animal Health in the Omaha area, where I help import animal health pharmaceuticals and technology solutions.

Hello! My name is Kayla Brown, and I live in Plattsmouth, Nebraska, with my husband, Andrew, our 4-year-old son, Bennett, and our field golden, Ivy. I grew up on a family farm in Tipton, Missouri, and I currently work as an Import Specialist for Merck Animal Health in the Omaha area, where I help import animal health pharmaceuticals and technology solutions.

In the latest Cultivating Leaders Webinar with Amanda Martin (President and CEO, Illinois Agricultural Leadership Foundation), Brooke Clay Taylor (Chief Operating Officer, Empire Ag and Founder, Rural Gone Urban), Chase DeCoite (Senior Vice President of Food Industry Relations, Innovation Center for U.S. Dairy) and Emily Peters (Director of Marketing and Sales, Union Pacific Railroad). Together, they explore the experiences, decisions and relationships that helped shape their path to upper-level leadership. Using their AFA experiences and connections as part of their broader career journeys, these leaders know what it takes to continue growing throughout a career.

We grew up in Black Earth, Wisconsin on a small hobby farm, where we learned the importance of hard work, teamwork, and faith by showing livestock in 4-H and running a small vegetable business. These early experiences shaped our passion for agriculture and provided a strong foundation for pursuing it as both a career and lifelong vocation.

You always hear people telling you to “build your network”.  Make the connection. Add someone on LinkedIn. Exchange contact information. Stay in touch.  But Amanda Martin, President and CEO of the Illinois Agriculture Leadership Foundation, challenges listeners of The Cultivating Leaders Podcast to take that one step further. 

My name is Dr. Jarai Carter, and I am currently a Lecturer at Columbia University in the School of Professional Studies, teaching in their Applied Analytics Master’s program. Previously, I worked at John Deere in a variety of roles starting as a Data Science intern in my graduate program, later becoming a Data Scientist, Manager of Data Science, and most recently a Senior Manager of Data Science. My most recent team was leading work focused on Personalized Experience for digital platforms, including the John Deere Operations Center.

Your online presence can start shaping your professional reputation long before you build a real-life connection. 

I’m Cole Pearson, and I work in Flora, Indiana, where I work as the Sales Support coordinator for Truland Equipment, a John Deere dealer in Northern Indiana and Northwest Ohio. I earned my undergraduate degree in agribusiness management from Purdue University in 2022.

Your online presence can start shaping your professional reputation long before you build a real-life connection. 

Hannah Klemmer was born and raised in Cary, North Carolina and attended North Carolina State University to earn her Bachelor’s Degree in Food Science. During her time at NC State, she was very involved with the College of Ag and Life Sciences (CALS) community.

Chase joins The Cultivating Leaders Podcast to talk about what it really takes to build professional relationships that last. Chase has built a career connecting farmers, cooperatives, processors, customers and industry leaders across the food and dairy value chain.

Born and raised near Annapolis, Maryland, I have always loved the environment and had a strong passion to protect it. In college, that grew into a special focus on sustainable agriculture, where I wanted to support farmers and the industry in sustainability producing food that would feed our rapidly growing population. As I tried different internships to explore exactly HOW I wanted to help achieve that, I found a love for communications.

I grew up on my family’s dairy farm in Watertown, Wisconsin and now live in Omaha, Nebraska where I work for Union Pacific Railroad as a marketing manager for export grain. In this role, I lead pricing and strategy for export grain, helping move corn, soybeans, and milo from origin to global markets. Prior to this position, I was a sales manager on our grain products team working with soybean crush and ethanol accounts.

I grew up in Oak Harbor, Ohio, where I spent much of my time raising lambs and looking for any opportunity to ride along with my grandpa on his row crop operation. Those experiences sparked my passion for agriculture and ultimately led me to Ohio State ATI.

I am Kate Maertens, and I’m honored to have been chosen as one of the 30 Voices in this campaign. AFA has brought many opportunities and friends into my life. It’s hard to believe that it’s been 17 years since I was selected as an AFA community scholar, and I’ve been connected to AFA ever since.

We have always had agriculture as part of our lives, from growing up on family farms to now raising our own family surrounded by it. We currently live near Cozad, Neb., where Mark recently began working for the Farmacy Seed and Chemical and I (Miranda) work from home for Angus Media. We both attended South Dakota State University.

I'm from southwestern Ohio, where I grew up on my family's corn and soybean farm. I went on to study Agribusiness and Applied Economics at Ohio State, and had various internships in commodity merchandising and ag lending during that time. From an early age, I knew I wanted to work in agriculture, but I didn't discover the variety of opportunities in ag technology until attending Leaders Conference as a first year student in 2015.

I am Kate Maertens, and I’m honored to have been chosen as one of the 30 Voices in this campaign. AFA has brought many opportunities and friends into my life. It’s hard to believe that it’s been 17 years since I was selected as an AFA community scholar, and I’ve been connected to AFA ever since.

I am Harrison VanDeWalle, a second-generation apple farmer living and working in Alton, NY, where I help run my family's vertically integrated apple farming operation, VanDeWalle Fruit Farm.