It’s impossible to quantify the contributions of women across agriculture. For March 8, International Women’s Day, National FFA celebrated the thousands making an impact – and one specifically who is making hers global.
Anne Knapke, the 2003-04 eastern region vice president, currently serves as a senior program officer for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in Washington, D.C., where she works on partnering with the private sector to advance women’s nutrition in Africa and south Asia. In brief: She works with companies to offer or develop fortified products for reproductive-age women facing nutrient deficiencies. The goal is to make the products available locally, so the population has access to healthier, more nutritiously diverse foods.
She joined the foundation in 2018 after serving as the legislative director for Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota. Knapke took that post in 2015 after graduating from the University of Chicago with a dual master’s degree in public policy and social work. “I’ve always been interested in how policy influences social issues,” she says.
“Attending ILSSO [International Leadership Seminar for State Officers] and policy and leadership events showed me a new world,” says Knapke, who grew up on a farm in Oxford, Ohio. “I wanted to learn more about agriculture and food systems around the world, and why there were so many hungry people if we produce more than enough food globally to feed everyone. And I was curious about how policy could be both a catalyst for and a hindrance to addressing hunger.”
Her interest in public policy and global food security issues has driven her career steps. After she graduated from Ohio State University in 2006 with a bachelor’s degree in political science and international relations, she began her career at Cargill. Knapke’s six years in the corporate space were very valuable, she says, as she developed corporate responsibility initiatives and learned the intricacies of domestic and international business markets.
“There are a lot of ways the private sector can influence social issues,” she says. “Working at Cargill gave me footing to go back to grad school and make sustainable change.”
FFA has been a strong influence, too. “There are so many ways it has subconsciously become part of what I do,” Knapke says. “Diplomatic skills have helped hone my career path. How do you forge a compromise to move forward and solve problems? How do you have respectful conversations with people who have different viewpoints? My FFA experiences helped me develop critical thinking and communication skills, and I have put them to use over and over again in working with others as I’ve embarked on new challenges and taken on leadership roles in my career.”
In fact, her career advice is this: “Give yourself permission to learn from someone else’s perspective.” And to women specifically, she says, “Find the places where your voice is going to be heard and use it.”
