Trust In Food
Trust In Food

Meet the team

Bringing an authentic passion to every project

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

Nate Birt

Nate

Birt

Vice President

Nate Birt is Vice President of 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.
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Farmer-centered communication, carbon markets, biodiversity and wildlife habitat, state and federal conservation policy, conservation nonprofit landscape

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

julie murphy

Julie

Murphy

Business Development Director

Julie is a sales professional with a degree in agriculture business from Cal Poly SLO. She has worked for 20 years in the wine and spirits industry creating impactful programs and successful partnerships.  She joined the Trust In Food team with a deliberate focus to align with a purpose-driven company that is rooted in accelerating the adoption of sustainable practices throughout the country’s food systems. As Business Development Director, Julie leads development of new partnerships to help organizations understand and engage producers through Trust In Food’s proprietary data insights platforms and Farm Journal’s suite of brands that provide the most comprehensive producer audience in the country.
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Kaeli Elisco

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.
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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.
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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 of 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.
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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

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. 
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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

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.

Kirk Dupps

Kirk Dupps is an authority in retailing and the $1-trillion-plus retail food industry with more than 45 years of leadership in all aspects of food distribution. Kirk began his career with Kroger Food Stores and then helped Walmart increase its presence in retail food and served as head of Sam’s Wholesale Club’s $60-billion grocery business. While on the board of the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation (NFWF), he teamed NFWF with Walmart to place 1 million acres of land in conservation over 10 years

Contact Us

Get in touch with Trust in Food to learn more about how we can help your organization meet its conservation and sustainability goals.

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— Your Trust in Food Team