How do you mean, “really knowing”?

Let me try to explain it this way. At Ceva, among other things, we produce vaccines for livestock. We’re a pretty small company, with only about 625 employees in the U.S., and — being at our headquarters in this country — I deal with a remarkable number of them all the time. I know the people in the lab who actually make the vaccines. I know the warehouse team and the supply-chain people. I go to the poultry farms. I’m embedded with these teams, and there’s no substitute for that kind of on-the-ground knowledge. It is invaluable for being effective at communications and public affairs. I’m first and foremost a communications person. I’m a storyteller at heart, and I guess it is in my DNA.

In what sense?

My ambition, when I was studying journalism, was to write for agricultural trade journals. From the time I was 5, I wanted to be a writer. I come from generations of Irish storytellers, with that “gift of gab.” We recently found a collection of things my great grandmother had written, including articles in the local newspapers. She was a wonderful writer, and I only discovered that in the past few years. So that interest in writing has been in the family for generations. But I realized soon enough that to make a decent living, I needed to do more than write for agricultural publications, so I quickly moved into communications in a broader sense.

And that included working in travel and tourism?

Yes, in Coffeyville, Kansas., which is about an hour south of Fredonia. Coffeyville was the site of a famous gunfight in 1892, when the Dalton Gang tried to rob two local banks at the same time.  They failed. As part of my work in tourism, right out of college, I was part of a troupe of living historians, and we’d re-enact the gunfight for tourists. I’ve also robbed trains – now that is really fun. People who are really interested in the Wild West still go to Coffeyville. Our tourism office was part of the local Chamber of Commerce, so there was more to the work than staging fake shootouts, of course. We were also lobbying in the state capital and dealing with city and county officials, so I was also working in economic development, which led me into the career I have today.

So — why the long commute?

My husband and I live on a cattle ranch that has been in his family since 1867. It’s pretty small compared to a lot of other ranches in Kansas, with about 200 cow-calf pairs, maybe 600 head total when we’re not in a drought. Until recently, my husband had been a fulltime cowboy. But lately he has been away from the ranch volunteering with the Kansas and National Association of Conservation Districts. He’s even going to Washington, D.C., himself now to talk about water resources and native prairie issues with Congressional staff and federal agencies.  He’s a real grassroots lobbyist. He’s now interested in public affairs in a way he had never been before, and it’s wonderful to be able to talk with him about our work. After more than 25 years of marriage we have something new in common.

Reach Jody at [email protected].