I didn't grow up planning on dairy. I grew up in a dance studio - a competitive dancer who, of all the styles, loved ballet most. Not for the freedom; for the discipline. The positions, the technique, the idea that every movement has a purpose. Looking back, that was probably my first clue.

I found agriculture almost by accident — an ag charter school that fit around my dance schedule. But the more I saw, the more I realized ag was so much bigger than "just farming." Behind the scenes was a whole world of business operations, supply chains, commodity markets, risk, forecasting, and strategy, all working to feed people every day. Purpose and complexity in the same place. I was hooked.

In college I found economics and financial modeling, and things clicked. Scenario analysis, forecasting, connecting what happened before to what might happen next — and building a story around it. I loved it, and it turned out I was good at it.

My career started on a butter-plant floor, through Land O'Lakes' rotational program. I'd always wanted to land in corporate strategy, but that year on the floor was the most valuable thing I could have done. I visited farms. I learned how milk actually becomes product. And most importantly, I learned about people — that there is value at every level of an organization, from the operator to the planner to the CEO. That's stayed with me ever since.

From there my work spread across the industry — commodity markets, supply and demand planning, logistics optimization, member relations, network balancing, strategy. Today I lead Planning & Dairy Analytics for the cooperative, and what excites me most is connecting all of it: holding the market signal, the supply reality, the production constraint, and the member outcome in the same frame at once.