Oklahoma Farm Report’s Maci Carter attended the AgHERCulture Event this year and caught up with Oklahoma Secretary of Agriculture Blayne Arthur to talk about the event and what it provides for Oklahoma’s youth.
“Tonight, we had our collegiate AgHERCulture event,” Arthur explained. “We had keynote speaker Kirby Schnor, who is a very well-recognized face in ag media. We also had several mentors who spent time talking and networking with college students from across Oklahoma as well as some K-State students. “
The goal of the event is to give tomorrow’s agricultural leaders and producers the opportunity to get advice from women already established in the agriculture industry and to potentially create long term networking relationships with mentors.
“We happen to think that we have the best mentors anywhere,” Arthur said, “We have tons of women who have given their time to this event over time, but this evening, we had lots of gals from all sectors of ag giving their perspective on what it was like to be in college and how they pursued their current careers.”
The standout lineup included Kirby Smith, Chief of Staff for the Lieutenant Governor’s Office, Kelli Payne, of Growing Paynes in Mustang, Oklahoma, and co-founder of the AIM (Agriculture Immersion and Mentorship) Program, Brandi Herndon, Agribusiness Manager at the Tulsa State Fair, Kylee Deniz, Executive Director of the Pork Council, Alisen Anderson, former Agriculture Instructor at NEO at Miami, Oklahoma and current American Farm Bureau Federation Young Farmers and Ranchers Committee member, and Cortney Cowley, senior economist in the Regional Affairs Department of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City.
Arthur hopes the attending college students were able to make lasting connections, get their questions answered, and perhaps get new directions or focus on their career goals.
Arthur said the staff at the Department of Agriculture are the reasons that the event has been such a success, but her reasons for continuing the event are more personal. “So many of us at the Department of Ag had mentors had either mentors or other people who really poured into us in our collegiate and professional careers, so we want to give the same opportunity to other young ladies,” she said. “We just want to see young women find success in the ag field, whatever that might be, agbusiness, production, or wherever their careers lead them, so this is one of the more exciting events that we get to be a part of during the year.”
The day after Carter and Arthur spoke was to be the AgHerCulture Event for High School students. Of it, she said, “Tomorrow will be an all day event, and they will transition through several different opportunities. We’ve got great mentors that join them at lunchtime, but then they will have different breakout sessions to focus on more areas, such as leadership and personal development. We’re not focused as much on career progression with the high school group, but we always get a great group of students who have a busy and fun day here.”
Another opportunity that Arthur has planned for Agricultural interested youth is the Youth Ag Council which begins in August with a competative application process among high school seniors. “We also have different internships with all of our different divisions, and sometimes we just have a student who asks to job shadow with Mary Ruth in Market Development, or Jan Leigh at the Capitol. Any way that we can support these young ag leaders, we certainly want to help.”