Meet the team

Bringing an authentic passion to every project

Amy Skoczlas Cole

Amy

Skoczlas Cole

President

Over the course of a 25-year career spanning Fortune 500 companies, nonprofits and foundations, Amy has worked to reimagine the systems that deliver sustainable food, clean water and low carbon energy to society. Amy has worked domestically and internationally at every point in the food-fuel-fiber value chain, advancing new paradigms for a healthy, thriving society and planet.

Ask me about:

Human dimensions of behavior change, carbon and water markets, the future of regenerative agriculture and livestock, bringing innovation to scale, cross-sector collaborations

Jimmy Emmons

Jimmy

Emmons

Senior Vice President, Climate-Smart Programs

Jimmy Emmons leads Trust In Food’s Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities Connected Ag Project, America’s Conservation Ag Movement and Trust In Beef, coalition-driven conservation programs developed to accelerate the adoption of conservation agriculture at scale. Jimmy and his wife, Ginger, own and operate Emmons Farm in Leedey, Okla., where they farm 2,000 acres and have 5,000 acres of rangeland where they run 300 head of cows and calves in an integrated row-crop and livestock operation that optimizes water resources, reduces erosion and improves organic material in the soils. He is a public speaker, educator, mentor and advocate for conservation management practices to improve producers’ resiliency to weather, operational efficiency and profitability.

Ask me about:

Regenerative agriculture, securing a firm future for American agriculture, the importance of soil health, ways to improve soils through increased carbon and water-holding capacity, resiliency through regenerative practices, how growers and producers can achieve profitability through regenerative practices

Rebecca Bartels

Rebecca

Bartels

Vice President, Strategic Partnerships

Following a nearly decade long career dedicated to connecting the international crop input and technology supply chain, Rebecca joined Farm Journal in 2021. She serves on the leadership team of Trust in Food and America’s Conservation Ag Movement, one of the largest public-private partnerships focused on conservation in our nation’s history. As the Senior Director of Strategic Partnerships, Rebecca focuses on helping clients activate universally beneficial change across the industry toward more sustainable, regenerative practices and helping companies get the intelligence they need to accelerate the resiliency of our agricultural production system.

Ask me about:

Strategically communicating, researching and promoting sustainable approaches to integrated pest management portfolios, biological and hybrid crop inputs, and precision application and traceability technology.

Andrew

Lauver

Director of Business Development

Andrew Lauver joins Farm Journal serving as Director of Business Development, Trust in Food, following more than a decade in the ag industry focused on precision agriculture, biotechnology, sustainability, ag policy, and industry relations. In this role, Andrew delivers Trust In Food’s capabilities to support food companies, agribusinesses, nonprofits, and government agencies with their sustainable food and regenerative agriculture goals, strategies, programs and products. Andrew is from a fifth-generation family farm and received his BS from Iowa State University in Agricultural Studies, holds a Master of Agribusiness from Kansas State University, and a Master of Jurisprudence in Agricultural Law and Sustainability from the Drake University Law School. He has international farm and animal agricultural study experience in Europe, Asia, and South America. Andrew resides in Iowa on his family’s farm with his wife Mary and their two daughters, Doris and Viola.

Ask me about:

Industry partnerships, precision agriculture, water quality, scaling sustainable agriculture, productivity, and profitability, conservation, succession planning, the importance of rural vitality, ag policy and potential strategic alliances in the agricultural supply chain

Betsy

Jackson

Outreach Coordinator, Climate-Smart Programming for Historically Underserved Communities

As the Outreach Coordinator, Betsy focuses on building authentic partnerships to expand Farm Journal’s reach to historically underserved farmers and ranchers. Her goal is to support these producers in adopting climate-smart practices that align with their values and aspirations. With almost a decade of farming experience, Betsy has cultivated her expertise across various scales and climates, focusing on organically grown specialty crops and diversified operations. She most recently managed an incubator farm that supported refugee farmers from Burma, highlighting her commitment to equitable and community-driven agriculture. She currently resides in North Carolina with her family.

Ask me about:

Developing resilience, exploring the synergy between organic farming and climate-smart practices, designing drip irrigation systems for water conservation, cultivating specialty crops within sustainable farming, recognizing the value of floriculture for small farm profitability, crafting accessible content, advocating for farmer-centered equity and collaboration

Kaeli

Elisco

Director of Client Success and Operations

Kaeli leads the Client Success Trust In Food team focusing on project management and creating an excellent customer journey. More than 15 years of media experience, managing and executing programs to ensure client success.

Ask me about:

My ability to connect and grow client partnerships. Listening to their objectives and identifying a strategy to meet and exceed their goals.

Cara

Urban

Sustainability + Carbon Analyst

As Trust In Food’s Sustainability + Carbon Analyst, Cara Urban supports the design, implementation and delivery of TIF’s research solutions and actionable insights. She works with teams across Farm Journal and beyond to develop TIF’s in-house expertise on agricultural carbon and ecosystem service offerings and markets. Her goal: to keep TIF on the cutting edge of what farmers can do for the planet.

Ask me about:

Farmer attitudes on sustainability, climate-smart agriculture, systems thinking, voluntary markets, food as health, validating ecosystem service benefits, environmental policy communications

David Frabotta

David

Frabotta

Director of Climate-Smart Content

David Frabotta is an award-winning multimedia journalist with 20+ years of B2B publishing and brand management experience. He’s worked in agriculture for more than 10 years focused on the global crop input industries and precision agriculture, including the impact of site-specific farming on sustainability and profitability.

Ask me about:

Input supply chains, autonomy and robotics, machine learning, carbon farming, integrated marketing campaigns, public relations and outreach, and how consumer trends and preferences are driving change in food and production systems.

Emily

Maneval

Client Success Manager

Emily Maneval is Trust In Food’s Client Success Manager. Her work focuses specifically with our America’s Conservation Ag Movement (ACAM) clients. She engages our private and public sector partners to ensure they are receiving the support needed to achieve their goals and deliverables while maintaining the progress and integrity of the ACAM mission to accelerate climate-smart agriculture. Her goal is to achieve efficient and effective project management while maintaining highly satisfied clients. 

Ask me about:

Sustainable food systems, on-farm planning and adoption of sustainable practices, history of U.S. farm policy, behavioral change models, farmer perspective on transitional agriculture, three-legged stool of sustainability

Jamie

Sears Rawlings

Manager, Climate-Smart Content

Working in agriculture communications for more than a decade has taught Jamie Sears Rawlings one principle: In order for the industry to accept and adopt change, it must have information to drive those decisions. Jamie joins the Trust In Food and American’s Conservation Ag Movement to focus on providing more of the information needed to bridge the gap between consumers and the farm-gate and help propel conservation agriculture to the forefront of all conversations.  

Ask me about:

challenges in agriculture communications, grower-centric communications tools, building grassroots advocacy coalitions, biologicals, integrated pest management programs

Nate Birt

Nate

Birt

Senior Adviser

Nate Birt is Senior Adviser to Farm Journal’s Trust In Food. He leads the day-to-day operations of America’s Conservation Ag Movement, a national public-private partnership that empowers collaborators to leverage Farm Journal’s 145+ years of market trust and farmer-to-farmer networks to accelerate adoption of regenerative practices, products and technologies.

Ask me about:

Farmer-centered communication, carbon markets, biodiversity and wildlife habitat, state and federal conservation policy, conservation nonprofit landscape

Consultants

Bengt Hyberg

Bengt ‘Skip’ Hyberg, is President of H&H Conservation, an economic and policy consulting firm. He formerly served as a senior economist, scientist, and senior advisor to the Chief Scientist with the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA). During a 32-year career with USDA he worked with the Farm Service Agency, Natural Resources Conservation Service, Economic Research Agency, and as a Exchange Officer with the Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics. 

He earned degrees in Forest Management (BS Rutgers University, MS and Ph.D. North Carolina State University) and Economics (Ph.D. North Carolina State University). He has published extensively and is the recipient of numerous awards for his work, including the Economist of the Year award, the Fred Woods award for sustained excellence in policy leadership and the John E. Lee Award from the USDA Economist  Group, the Honors Silver Metal from the Environmental Protection Agency, and the Wetland Conservation Achievement Award from Ducks Unlimited. He recently published a textbook, “A Guide to Understanding the Fundamental Principles of Environmental Management – It Ain’t Magic: Everything Goes Somewhere.”

Advisers

Jay Vroom

Jay Vroom chairs the America’s Conservation Ag Movement Board of Advisers, guiding the largest public-private conservation partnership in American agriculture. Jay is a long-trusted voice in agribusiness, having served 30 years as CEO of CropLife America, the trade association for companies that produce, sell and distribute crop protection and biotechnology products used by farmers, ranchers and landowners.

Jay served as chairman of the FFA Foundation’s Individual Giving Council and continues as a member of FFA’s President’s Advisory Council. Jay also sits on the boards of the Soil Health Institute and Alpha Gamma Rho fraternity. He also has served in leadership positions on the U.S. Production Ag CEO Council, the Coalition to Advance Precision Agriculture, the Agricultural Retailers Association and Asmark Institute.

An agriculture honors graduate from the University of Illinois, Jay still owns the crop farming operation he grew up on in north-central Illinois.

Chad Ellis

Chad Ellis

Chad Ellis is the Chief Executive Officer for Texas Agricultural Land Trust (TALT) and the founding chair of Trust In Beef. He brings a wealth of land conservation experience, most recently in his work for the Noble Research Institute, the largest nonprofit agricultural research organization in the U.S.  Mr. Ellis has over 20 years of experience working directly with producers and land managers implementing stewardship focused management.

Ellis not only promotes and advocates land stewardship principles, he also implements it within his own family operation in Lohn, Texas. Mr. Ellis is passionate about helping empower the producer to be better tomorrow than they are today. Ellis brings deep connections and experience with USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service, where he served in increasingly responsible roles for a decade. He also currently serves on an executive advisory board to the U.S. Secretary of Agriculture.

Contact Us

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