2026 Keynote Speakers

Erica Leubner
NY Farm Girls
Thursday, February 13, 12:30 p.m.

bio coming soon

Marilyn Vetter became the president and CEO of Pheasants Forever and Quail Forever in February 2023 when her professional and personal worlds combined.

Pheasants Forever and Quail Forever is the nation’s leading organization committed to conserving upland birds and wildlife through habitat improvement. Marilyn leads a passionate 630-person team while amplifying awareness of their critical work. In her first two years, she and her team shattered every organizational record including revenue growth, membership, restored lands, and educational outreach. 

Her professional background also includes 30 years of strategic leadership, business management, and political advocacy in the biopharmaceutical sector. Marilyn has also been a board member for several nonprofits. And when Marilyn is not working, she enjoys traveling, writing, hiking, and hunting with her husband and their five dogs.

Janice Person is a born communicator, picking up the pen and a camera as she first went to summer camp. She’s been traveling, talking and taking photos and video ever since. Agriculture wasn’t as automatic. Janice stumbled into the farming space through an internship with farm magazines while studying journalism in college. She loved the outdoors already and found discovering the back story of food energizing. She has since moved around the country and through various parts of agriculture too – cotton, vegetables, dairy and soybeans to name a few – and has been sharing all the cool stuff she learns about food and farm.

Traveling, talking and taking photos and video has taken her career through farm magazines, a New York agency, a small seed company in Mississippi and one of the industry’s revolutionary players. It was during Janice’s time at Monsanto that she embraced social media and pioneered consumer outreach online. She also took ag stories to meet people on their own turf in New York, the Bay Area, Austin and more. She’s spent the past five plus years building a business of speaking, consulting, and the online training platform Grounded in Ag that helps others gain strong footing in agriculture.

Janice’s work as an ag communications pioneer bridging food and farm led to her induction into the Ag Relations Hall of Fame. She earned her master’s degree in journalism from the University of Memphis (Memphis, TN) and her bachelor’s degree in mass communication at Phillips University (Enid, OK).