Current employer:
National Pork Board

Education and work experience:
I am a University of Nebraska College of Law grad – class of 2000! I spent a year in private practice in Wichita, Kansas, then joined the law department at Excel Corporation (now Cargill Meat), working with the pork business and many other functions. I have not left the pork industry since but did leave the “practice” of law for many years with roles in hog procurement for Cargill then JBS. I also spent some time as the director of animal welfare for JBS Live Pork. I started with the NPB in the summer of 2017 as a director of packer relations and eventually led domestic marketing before moving “home” to operations, leading both legal and compliance. After a brief sabbatical as the VP of ops at a company that performed on-farm data collection and quantification and provided consulting services for environmental, social, and governance reporting, I came back to NPB, where I now, once again, lead legal and compliance as the director of operations.

AALA leadership roles:
I have enjoyed helping to develop and moderate a few sessions at the symposium and serving this year on the sponsorship committee. I look forward to working on the membership—marketing and symposium planning committees in 2025.

How did you get interested or involved in agricultural law?
I grew up in a farm family in north central Iowa. Both of my grandfathers and my dad were row crop farmers. We also had a few show cattle, and I participated in 4-H and FFA. I originally planned to be a veterinarian, but after much contemplation and an ag law class in my senior year at Oklahoma State University, I decided to apply to law school and never looked back. And while I left the actual practice of law for many years, I was never too far away, as I worked on large procurement contracts and navigated very complex regulatory requirements in the pork industry – both packing and live production.

What is your current role and what type of work are you doing?
As director of operations at NPB, I manage all legal and compliance matters. This includes everything from drafting and negotiating more than 100 contracts a year to managing our portfolio of trademarks and other intellectual property to answer all the random questions that seem to arise on a daily basis. I am also responsible for our relationship with the USDA, which is an important function in a federally administered checkoff program. The USDA/AMS specialist assigned to us must ensure that we are investing the dollars we receive from producer assessments in accordance with the Pork Act, the Pork Order, and the AMS Guidelines for Oversight of Commodity Research and Promotion Programs. This means that nearly every contract and PO that we enter into and every piece of communication that we publish is reviewed, first by me then by our AMS specialist, who must provide approval.

What are some challenges and opportunities you see in your job and the ag law profession?
The pork industry has had a very tough few years of financials, and that has put a lot of strain on our farmers. We are working diligently to try to help grow domestic and international demand for our products with the younger generations. We face headwinds of special interest groups who would like for consumers to stop eating meat, an increasingly complex array of state regulations on production, and trade barriers that aren’t always based on science. While this sounds like a lot of negative, it is not – it creates the opportunity to work in a fast-paced global industry and work toward solutions, which I absolutely love. And that is my sales pitch for students who are at all interested in the law – there is no other industry that is as important to the world as agriculture. We need smart, thoughtful, well-rounded lawyers to help us navigate a myriad of difficult decisions every day.

How does AALA help or benefit your profession or current role?
I love the network I have formed as a member of AALA. There is nothing like being around passionate people who are working on the same issues as you – even if they are coming from a different viewpoint. Also, because I don’t work in a law firm, I am not surrounded by lawyers every day, so it is really fun to get to talk shop and swap stories at the symposium each year.

What is one of your favorite AALA memories or experiences?
I brought my daughter, a 19-year-old sophomore at the University of Iowa, to the 2024 symposium with me. She walked away with a newfound love for ag law and several new contacts who have offered to help her maneuver through an upcoming transfer to Oklahoma State. I cannot think of any other professional conference I could have taken her to where she would be embraced and included as “one of the family” with such ease. My love for this organization and the symposium grew exponentially as a result, and it is all about the people involved.