We Heard You! Now, Nashville awaits you for WIAS 2023

By Michelle Pelletier Marshall, Women in Agribusiness Media (December 20, 2022)

As we wind down this year and prepare for WIA activities for 2023, we look back at this year, especially at the post-event survey from our annual Women in Agribusiness Summit. We examined every survey answer and carefully considered your suggestions. So thank you for taking the time to respond (we had a 39 percent response rate, which is great!) to help us make the 2023 event – in Nashville, September 26-28 – even better. (Psst, registration is already open.)

As far as the 2022 event in Dallas, key takeaways from the survey were:

• 41% of attendees were manager level or higher. Of those:

- 6% were president, CEO, or owner of their own company

- 20% were executive level (this includes president, CEO, and owner categories)

- 21% managers

• Top 3 job functions in attendance: finance/risk management, sales, and operations
  

• 47 U.S. states were represented with over one-third of attendees hailing from these five states combined: Texas, Illinois, Minnesota, Colorado, and California.
  

• 15 countries represented, with the most attendees from: the U.S., Mexico, Canada, the Netherlands, and Brazil.

And here’s what you had to say:

“In my 20 years in the industrial space, I’ve never seen a value chain pull together like this for collaboration [WIAS22]…. Frequent and casual breaks offered MULTIPLE short opportunities to meet folks…. The topics were relevant to today’s market which allowed collaborative access to new ideas/companies/people READY to dive into ag in a new way.”

– Jill Devlin, VP of Marketing at UpTerra

“Thank you to you and your team for such an amazing experience. The speakers brought so much education and thoughtfulness to the stage that made us excited to learn new things and brush up on others. I thought that overall the WIA was a tremendous experience…”

- Kaitlin Nicholson, Farm Procurement and Harvest Specialist, Gold Leaf Farming

“I love attending the Women in Agribusiness (WIA) Summit. I raise livestock and am an agriculture industry recruiter….To me the WIA Summit is about enhancing agribusinesses and gathering with and learning from and helping other professional women who are as passionate about the agriculture industry as I am.”

- Bonnie Andersen, Ag Industry Recruiter and Livestock Producer, Inc.

“We are grateful for the steady drumbeat of our WIA community and appreciate all the feedback – positive and constructive,” said Carrie Vita, WIA event director. “The 2023 agenda is already in the works and we are considering, based on attendees’ suggestions, more structured networking opportunities, professional development and leadership presentation offerings, and more options to join in on roundtable-like discussions. We are listening and are very excited to host you in Nashville in 2023!”