Featured 2019 Speakers

Kate Greenberg was appointed to serve as Colorado’s Commissioner of Agriculture by Governor Jared Polis in December 2018. She leads a staff of 300 employees across the department’s eight divisions of Animal Health, Brand Inspection, Colorado State Fair, Conservation Services, Inspection and Consumer Services, Laboratory Services, Markets and Plant Industry. As Commissioner, Greenberg’s key initiatives…

Florian Schattenmann is Cargill’s Chief Technology Officer and Vice President for Innovation and Research & Development (R&D). He oversees a global team that is driven by the vision of relentlessly creating value for Cargill and its customers via research, application and product development, and technical service support across agriculture, food, animal feed and bio-industrial. Prior…

Daphne Taber is the Practice Area Lead for Slalom’s Denver Customer Engagement & Digital Strategy practice.  She helps start-ups to Fortune 500 companies drive business value by becoming customer-centric organizations.  She uses data driven insights, human centered design principles and storytelling to educate business leaders and cultivate customer centric organizations.  Her 25+ years of experience…

Krysta Harden serves as Executive Vice President of Global Environmental Strategy for Dairy Management Inc. (DMI), which manages the national dairy checkoff on behalf of nearly 40,000 U.S. dairy farmers. Leveraging a strong background within agriculture, sustainability and food policy, Harden plays a key leadership role in defining the vision, strategy and plan forward for…

As the Chief Executive Officer of United Soybean Board, Polly Ruhland (@pollypencilplow) works on behalf of U.S. farmer investors to advance agriculture’s sustainability through research, education and promotion programs. Prior to joining USB, Ruhland served as Chief Executive Officer at the Cattlemen’s Beef Promotion and Research Board. She served as a senior vice president at…

Saswati is the Head of Food Systems Innovation at the World Economic Forum (WEF) where she heads WEF’s global initiative on leveraging technology and innovations to address food systems challenges as well as the agriculture work in India. As part of this work, she is responsible for content development, partnership facilitation and program development on…

Erin Fitzgerald (@fitzisit) serves as CEO of the U.S. Farmers & Ranchers Alliance® (USFRA®), a farmer and rancher led organization committed to encouraging stakeholder and consumer dialogue about how food is grown and raised. She leads the organization’s strategic direction of the organization. Fitzgerald’s thought leadership in the sustainability space convenes food and agriculture stakeholders…

As president and CEO of the U.S. Dairy Export Council (USDEC), Tom Vilsack provides strategic leadership and oversight of USDEC’s global promotional and research activities, regulatory affairs and trade policy initiatives. This includes working with industry leaders to develop a long-term vision for growth and consumer trust in U.S. dairy. Vilsack joined USDEC in January…