“She mentioned, ‘Do you perceive what is predicted of you? Do you perceive how a lot you could have? Don’t disappoint,’ and I used to be like, ‘I’ve gotta work exhausting to not disappoint,’” Ford says.
Ford has a imaginative and prescient for Land O’Lakes. She desires to remodel individuals’s perceptions of the butter and cream firm and refocus consideration on the efforts it’s making within the ag-tech area.
“My imaginative and prescient is to proceed to spend money on expertise,” she says. “You must have agility. E-commerce and e-business and expertise is disrupting all industries, together with agriculture, and there’s a chance when you could have an insight-driven, technology-focused firm, as I consider Land O’ Lakes is. ”
The way forward for Land O’Lakes
“Grain farmers, growers, and producers throughout the US are all affected by the uncertainty churning round commerce negotiations and retaliatory tariffs,” Ford says. “Export market entry is essential to those farmers and the agriculture business and we’re seeing a slowdown as a result of uncertainty within the commerce atmosphere.”
Ford says she’s spoken with soybean farmers and others involved with the tariff politics.
“What I’d let you know is that our farmer members are supportive in understanding that the administration is making an attempt to do one thing on mental property theft,” she says. “They wish to ensure that they’ve acceptable commerce agreements, and I believe that they’re useful.”
Greater than anything, she says, these farmers want decision and readability — shortly.
“Time is essential,” she says. “So then what’s an important factor the administration can do? They will transfer with velocity and resolve these commerce points and resolve these tariff points.”
Being a primary
When the announcement about Ford’s promotion to CEO went out, the press launch celebrated her achievements, however it made no particular point out of an essential “first” in Fortune 500 historical past.
With Ford’s promotion, she grew to become the primary brazenly homosexual feminine CEO to guide a Fortune 500 firm.
Within the months since, she’s heard from individuals about how a lot that “first” has meant to them.
“Individuals have come as much as me and mentioned, ‘Thanks,’” she says. “And it’s not simply the LGBTQ neighborhood, it’s simply individuals of their regular life saying, ‘Thanks for being your genuine self and inspiring others to do this.’”
Ford says she’s by no means confronted discrimination in her profession, however she’s positively thought-about its potential influence on herself and her household.
“I had made deliberate choices for some locations the place I felt as if it will not be as pleasant,” she says. “I mentioned, ‘The job seems nice. You’re an exquisite chief. I can’t be right here as a result of I don’t suppose this will probably be nice. My partner is a lady, and I’ve a daughter.”
On that path to the C-suite, she calls again to an essential lesson, but once more from her mom: “Beth, if you’d like one thing, ask for it.”
“You anticipate you’re going to be acknowledged since you’ve performed the exhausting work, and that isn’t truly the way it all the time occurs,” Ford says.
