Leaders Come Together to Develop Skills, Share Insights

Fifteen growers from nine states - Illinois, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, North Dakota, Kansas, South Dakota and Wisconsin took part in NCGA’s Leadership Academy program in St. Louis this week.

The NCGA Leadership Academy is designed to prepare state corn leaders to lead their respective state grower associations and checkoff boards.  This year’s program included training on the following: transformational leadership, consensus building, forecasting and anticipating future challenges, parliamentary procedure, and building trust with consumers through traditional and social media. The group visited the NCGA office to meet and build a relationship with staff who lead national programs.  NCGA’s CEO, Jon Doggett, Board President, Lynn Chrisp and in-coming First Vice-President John Linder were on hand to interact with the participants.

Leading the conversation on building trust was the Center for Food Integrity (CFI). CFI is a not-for-profit organization whose members and partners reflect the diversity of today’s food system from farmers, ranchers and food companies to universities, NGOs, restaurants, retailers and food processors. In addition to providing on-camera media training and social media training, CFI led a discussion on using shared values in building trust with consumers.

A new component to the training was a tour and panel discussion at the Danforth Plant Science Center.  The panel discussion was moderated by futurist, Bob Treadway and included: Jon Doggett, NCGA CEO; James Carrington, the center’s president; Vijay Chauhan, global lead at BioSTL, and Pam Strifler, vice president of Stakeholder Strategies and Affairs at Bayer. The panel was open to members of the St. Louis agribusiness community.