Company: Corteva Agriscience. The American agricultural chemical and seed company was the agriculture division of DowDuPont prior to being spun off as an independent public company. The Corteva name is derived from a combination of words meaning ‘heart’ and ‘nature.’
Education: MBA, University of Chicago; Juris Doctor, Chicago Kent College of Law, Illinois Institute of Technology; bachelor’s degree in political science and criminal justice, University of Illinois, Chicago.
Favorite leadership quote: “Character is destiny.” –Heraclitus, Greek philosopher
Describe your career path.
I’m very passionate about farming, agriculture and food, though I’m a city kid, born and raised in Chicago. I started off my career as an attorney, right out of law school with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency as a regulator. Before I came to Corteva, I was the president and CEO of the American Egg Board. And just before that, I ran the Agricultural Marketing Service at the USDA. Overall, I’ve had a very diverse career; it’s been in both the public and nonprofit sectors, and the corporate sector as well. I think that’s why this role with Corteva is such a good fit for me and for the company; I’m able to put all my past experiences to good use.
What does your role entail?
I wear two hats at Corteva. One of them is senior vice president of external affairs, which encompasses the strategy and leading of this global function at Corteva. That includes corporate communications, corporate responsibility, government and industry affairs and product advocacy. The second hat I wear is that of chief sustainability officer, which is a key role given sustainability’s importance to our company. Both are important levers we have consolidated into one function that helps us externally with a broad set of stakeholders, as we bring the outside in.
What is your business philosophy?
I look at my role at Corteva in a couple of ways. One is organizationally. This is a big company, and I work to keenly understand what the priorities of the business are in order to support them and align my function’s priorities to add value and do all we can to help create a favorable operating environment. I also focus on our external affairs team, which includes about 119 people globally, to identify what they need to do their jobs. I work to provide the team with direction, resources, a supportive work culture, and I work to remove obstacles that hinder their work. This is a talented group of people based all over the world, and it’s important to make sure they are visible and appreciated, because what they do translates into the company’s success.
How is Corteva addressing the topics of diversity and inclusion in the workplace?
We’re a young company, and I’m proud our CEO, Jim Collins, and our entire company leadership are committed to inclusion, diversity and equity (ID&E) with our most valuable assets — our employees. Recently, Corteva announced our ID&E five-year targets to enrich the lives of our employees and strengthen the performance of our company, while advancing equity in agriculture. Our ID&E strategy and three priority focus areas are: culture of belonging, diverse representation and external impact. At Corteva, we show up, we listen, and we try to address people’s concerns. Throughout my entire career I’ve been passionate about the issues of ID&E and some of it has to do with where I came from. I am Latina and sensitized to inequity and bias, and I champion addressing these issues in the workplace and in the ag sector.
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