Hello, and welcome to Real Talk this Monday morning. Thanks for joining us, everyone. I'm Jill with Catalyst Food Leaders, and my co-host, Tia, is out today. But as you can see, we have two fantastic guests with us, Casey and Megan. And we're going to introduce them in just a moment. But we're super excited to have Casey and Megan both with us because they have been advocates for leadership and culture work. They have brought Catalyst to the Meat Institute's Food Safety Conference, and they are not outside observers. Casey has spent nearly a decade inside meat industry regulatory and policy. And Megan, you spent like ten years at JBS before moving to the Institute, I believe. So having you here together today gives us a view of this industry that very few people ever get. And I'm so excited to have you here to talk about what it actually takes to build leaders in one of what I think is the most demanding environments in food, having come from poultry myself. So welcome, Megan and Casey. We are excited to have you here on Real Talk today. Thanks, Jill. Excited to be here. Very excited. Good. Well, let's jump right in Casey. I, in the intro, I mentioned you've had over a decade and it's probably been more than that, uh, at the Meat Institute. And before that you were in food companies themselves. Do you mind walking us through a little bit of like who you are, what brought you here and what you love about the meat industry? Yeah. Um, so yeah, I'm over the fifteen year mark, um, now in the, in the total food industry. I tripped and I fell initially into the meat industry at a chocolate plant. And then a year later, I had an opportunity to go to a meat plant. And I loved it. I fell in love with manufacturing at the chocolate plant. But what I found in the meat industry was this community of people. It was just these incredible people everywhere I turned. And we always would joke that We were a really messed up family, but it was like a family. And it feels like that in the meat industry. It's just a very different breed of folks and one that I love. And being in the meat industry was not my intention. I tripped and I fell and ended here. But I've had some amazing opportunities that I probably wouldn't have gotten in other industries. I've been able to jump into roles that many probably would have said maybe I wasn't ready for. but they were ready to give me the opportunity. So it's been wonderful. After spending about seven years doing food safety and quality assurance roles in the industry, I joined the Meat Institute. So I've been at the Meat Institute for over eight years now. And here, you know, I keep my original purpose of food safety for sure. That's one of the core policy areas that I work on. But I also get to work on some other policy arenas, which is a lot of fun. And so I work on kind of the broader policy that helps us run our plants, you know, what connects into processing and slaughtering, as well as the animal welfare, cybersecurity, and just whatever else comes my way that seems interesting. Okay, so it sounds like you do whatever, you said you just ended with whatever comes my way. Other duties as assigned is what we like to call it at the Institute. Yeah, that one line item. But with that, I'm sure that can incorporate quite a few things coming from the meat industry myself. I know that it's always shifting. There's new things that pop up. Being in this role, has there been anything that's surprised you more than other things? I was not prepared for how often I would be talking to the media and helping explain what we do to the media. Um, I, I actually ended up doing it, you know, within the first year or two at the meat Institute, I spent way more time trying to help educate media on what we do as an industry. Um, and that was, that was a shock to me. I did not, did not realize that was gonna be part of the job. And yet it is. And what an important part, when I think about like all the myths that are out there around the food industry and misinformation. So having someone to help advocate for that. That's got to be pretty incredible. Yeah, it was an interesting experience and continues to be an interesting experience. And I love the responsibility. I look at it as a responsibility to help, you know, kind of educate by educating the media. We're educating consumers about what our industry really is and not what it isn't. That's awesome. Good. Well, speaking of the industry, Megan, you've spent a bit of time in the industry before you came to the Meat Institute. Do you mind walking us through your path and what led you into the meat industry and what led you to the Meat Institute? And of course, what keeps you there? Yeah, sure. Of course. So yeah, I grew up in Ag. My parents have a rural or a farm in Southwest Colorado that's a diversified um, operation. So cattle, pigs, sheep, uh, chickens, um, all that. So grew up in ag, um, through four H I was really passionate about, um, the ag industry. I went to Colorado state and I knew I was going to go to vet school. Like from the time I was eight, I was like, this is, this is my life path. I shadowed veterinarians. I was like, this is what I want to do. Our local vet at home was like, you do not want to do this. This is not a job for you. But I was like, I am going to do this, man. So I went to CSU and the intro week of animal science, everyone getting together, you look around and they're like, how many of you want to be veterinarians? And you raise your hand with a ninety percent of the other people. And you're like, that's a lot of us. They only accept a hundred and forty four at the time people per year at CSU's vet school, which is their own to go. And I was like, what else is there to do here? So still like push forward on that path. But I got involved with competitive judging at Colorado State. So wool, meat and livestock and really developed a passion for meat judging and then started doing Megan for a moment. Oh, sorry. Am I back now? Sorry. No, good. Here you're back. Awesome. Okay. Okay. Great. Um, I don't know where it left off, but, um, I'll just, it was a wrap. The part where I, where I lost you was during, when you raised your hands for who, who here wants to go to vet school and you're like looking around like, Hmm. Okay. It's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, I think being a part of four H I was really passionate about education. So I kind of went down the path of becoming an ag teacher. And then, um, while I was pursuing those, my undergraduate degree became involved with the judging teams, um, and really developed a passion for meat judging. And then that led me to getting involved with meat science research. Um, so at the time we were doing tenderness evaluation, so we would cook steaks, hundreds of steaks per week through an impingement oven. run tenderness analysis on them sometimes for like eight, twelve hours a day, doing like a lot, a lot of research and was really just getting my feet wet and doing meat science research. I then did a master's in meat science. and worked on a project related to grading standards. And then at the conclusion of my master's, I started working in industry as a product manager for Value Added Beef. So I spent about ten years there working with great teams at JBS, as you mentioned, and out of the corporate office, but spending a lot of time at our plants, so working across their plants in Nebraska and Texas and Colorado. So that was a lot of great experience there. And then I was ready for a new challenge. And the position of director of strategic content and programming at Meet Institute opened up. And I really started thinking about the passion that I had for education as I was a semester of coursework and student teaching shy of getting, becoming an ag teacher, which I don't really want to be an ag teacher. I want to be an extension agent and go be involved with for each youth. Um, but passion for education. Um, so really was excited about the opportunity and I've been with the meet Institute for almost two years now, um, leading content education programming through our conferences, through our, uh, LMS that we launched last year. And we're about to launch a new course in our LMS, which we're really excited about. And through our webinars and online learning. Wow. Wow. That's quite the story. I didn't realize you came, I'm going to say kind of like from the quality side of the business. And maybe that's probably making it too small, right? But when you talk about kind of all the meat grading, I didn't know you were a brand manager. Like. How cool is that? Coming through that direction versus Casey, you coming through kind of the food safety side, like you're the power duo for the meat industry. Love it. Love it. Yes. Okay. So you just mentioned you've got the LMS. So I think this is a great time to plug your, all the work that you all have done because that Listeria course that you have is fantastic. And that one has that, You mentioned there's another one coming. Is it along the same lines? Is there a teaser that you're going to put out for people? Yeah. So two things. And then I'll let Casey talk about it because Casey did. Casey is our subject matter expert on both of the courses that we are. Well, the course that's existing Listeria and the one that we're about to launch. But we did a Spanish translation of Listeria course this year as well. So if you have a Spanish speaking course, or Spanish reading learners, then we launched that course so that people can take that in the Spanish language. And then we're about to launch the Foundations of Foreign Material Control and Prevention course, which we're really excited about having. And Casey, you can talk more about that too. Yeah, I mean, really, it's kind of a history of our industry lately. If you look at the two subject matters that we're focusing courses on, you know, we had a really rough year in twenty twenty four on Listeria. We had a really rough year in twenty twenty five on foreign materials. So it's been wonderful to be able to work with Megan to be able to be really responsive to the issues that our industry is seeing and get this content out to people. We've seen over twenty four hundred people access the Listeria course and it has not even it is like just now been up for a year. So that's pretty incredible. And we are we're hearing that people are pretty excited for the foreign material course as well. So it's just a great opportunity to get more foundational kind of level education out there for all folks, regardless of whether you're a food safety person, operations person, purchasing, we think there's a lot of value in understanding these, you know, fundamental food safety concepts, regardless of what role you have in the food industry. And I would say even regardless of industry, because I know with the Listeria course, I have like shared that in the network and with specific people that are not in meat, just because the foundational principles are the same for Listeria, wherever you go, it's just applying it. So yeah. It's the same for reform material too. I mean, we, we create these courses targeted for the meat and poultry sector. Obviously that's our, that's our niche. Um, but there are, you know, great learnings from there, regardless of whether you're in meat or another food. Yeah, that, that is fantastic because right. There's so many things that are going on when it comes to like how to approach these different challenges and situations. And so having a tool. that your teams can go back to consistently to get some foundational information is so important. I think it even goes into, I know before we jumped on, we were talking a little bit about a conversation today and we talked about in the food industry, the meat industry isn't unlike other food sectors where For a long time, compliance has really been the focus of how do we meet regulations? How do we meet maybe GFSI standards? And there's really been this commitment to being in compliance. But there's also really this conversation and drive of how do we go past just compliance? Because doing just compliance only gets us to kind of like this bare minimum. So with the lens that you have across the industry, what do you see happening when it comes to like a compliance first culture and even people leading that inside over time versus, you know, the difference between a company that really treats compliance as this bare minimum and they're working towards these higher levels of commitment and ownership in Listeria, foreign material and other food safety areas. Yeah, I'll start. And there's a couple of things that come to mind when we talk about this, what I kind of see as commitment versus compliance. And we had a great speaker recently at our Solutions Summit. We were just that. You mentioned we've been traveling a lot. We were just in New Orleans at our Solutions Summit. And we had a great speaker, Carrie Ann Coker. And one of the things that she kept hitting on in her talk is that people will do what they are incentivized to do. And if your company is saying, we are gonna be compliant, that's what we're gonna do. That's the message that they are giving to folks. That's what they will achieve. Now that is what they're incentivized to do and you will be compliant. But if you look at just about every outbreak, every recall, those were compliant companies. They weren't not compliant. Many of them were GFSI certified. So that's not going to cut it. If that's the mentality that we're leading companies with is we're going to meet that minimum expectation of regulatory compliance, that's not going to protect you. And that's not going to set your team up for success when it really comes down to protecting food safety and protecting the consumer. That takes commitment. That takes dedication. That takes vigilance. That takes a mentality that we have to do not just the bare minimum, but the absolute best that we can do day in and day out, regardless of who's watching. Yeah, I think that's something that's so important for organizations and people to hear because it's easy to say, oh, we're not like them, when there's probably more similarity between organizations that have recalls and issues than we think. because they too, like you said, they are compliant. They probably have a GFSI certification and many organizations do. So they're not that much different than other companies. Yeah. Megan, is there anything that you see when you walk into companies that you're like, yes, this company, like I can see they get it. Yeah. I think it's, um, uh, one thing that really stuck with me is the, like how you fit and why you matter. So bringing along everyone from the foundation of not just understanding the outcome at the end of the day, but why in the process you're there and why what you're doing and the stuff that you're doing matters for the end goal. So I think that's one of the things that's really stuck with me about when you walk in, you can feel that. If people have that, that it's their place, their role, their responsibility, that like true ownership. Yeah, it's so interesting. We get many questions recently about what will auditing food safety culture look like? And I think what you just described touches on that a little bit, where what is it that people see, hear, or notice when they go in a facility? And once again, before we jumped on, we talked a little bit about there's also this level of like, how do you peel back what you see? Because I grew up in the Midwest. I shared that, you know, you can walk in and everybody's nice. Like you might think, gosh, everybody's nice at this company. They must have a great culture. And I think, um, Casey, you, you said something about like, really is nice. It's nice. The thing we're looking for. Do you mind expanding on that a little bit? Yeah. Um, You know, I, uh, I'm from the Midwest as well. So, you know, we're very friendly if your car's broken down on the side of the road. Um, but we have to make sure that we're not letting, you know, how we're trying to be perceived, get in the way of what we need to do as a business. Um, and so, you know, it's great to be nice and to lead with kindness. Um, but we need to also make sure that we're putting the consumer and our people first. People's safety, whether that's the consumer who's eating our product or the people that are working in our plants, that has to come first. And sometimes that means being clear with people and making it abundantly clear what needs to be done. It's not always an easy thing. It may not always seem very nice to say, but it needs to be done. And one of the things that I actually kind of hate talking about culture. I know it probably makes me an alien at this point, but I worry that when we talk about culture and we talk about things like auditing for culture, I'm not a huge fan of auditing for culture because can you really audit for culture? I mean, can you really in one day or two days at a plant really know whether their culture is right? No, I don't think so. I think, you know, whether the culture is working at a company, if at two AM when no one's around the right decision is made. If on Sunday night, when half the sanitation crew doesn't show up for whatever reason, you still can get started on Monday, maybe at a delayed startup, but you know, it's those key decisions that happen. Not when you're trying really hard to look pretty for an auditor, but that happened in the difficult times. And that comes from leadership above. giving the permission for food safety, worker safety, you know, whatever it is that you're trying to embed in your culture, I would argue it should definitely be those two at least. Um, but for that leader to, to set the tone that this does take priority, um, if this is, you know, this is the buck that, you know, it will stop here. So one of the things that I'm really excited, our executive board helped draft, um, what we call the, uh, food safety for the executive toolkit. It's a very simple set of tools that can take it into the plant with them when executive leaders are visiting. And all it does is give them prompts to help remind them how important it is for them to be talking about food safety, whether they're talking with maintenance personnel, engineering, sanitation, purchasing, sales. If you hear your leadership constantly talking about food safety or safety, and it doesn't have to be all the time, But that means something and that demonstrates to the people all the way throughout the company that this is top of mind and important for our executive leaders. So it should be top of mind for me as well. You know, I think you hit on something that's so important that what people say, people notice all the time what people are saying and how they respond to food safety or questions or when they don't talk about it so love that idea of a toolkit because if we don't explicitly talk about it especially our leaders it could give the message that food safety isn't important and we know that's not true because they're I have not met a leader yet who's like food safety is not important to me so helping them see how do you message around it so that others understand that as well And I think sometimes our leaders are hesitant to talk about food safety because they're like, well, I'm not a food safety expert. What do I say? So this isn't about turning them into food safety experts. They don't need to be. That's not their role. But it's making them feel confident to ask about it and to talk about it. Yeah, that's a really great point. There have been where people are like, let's teach them all about food safety. And there is some amount of awareness. They hired a food safety team to also be the experts. And so how they can position food safety so that it enables that team to do its work and empowers people to be, like you said, responsible in owning their parts of food safety as well. You know, the culture question comes up quite a bit. And I actually talked to someone recently, actually from the meat industry, who was doing like the tour of plants. And I had asked like, well, what do you notice as you've gone to different plants? And they responded that the plants that do well, not just with food safety, but other metrics, when they had walked in, people there, they greeted them. They made eye contact. They said hello, even if they didn't. really know who they were because they were new to the organization versus the facilities that weren't doing as well. People tended to just like have a different energy and they kind of looked away. Do you think there's anything in that? Because as we just talked about, like auditors are going to be coming in for just two days, maybe three days and trying to get a sense of culture. Where do you think that leads people to look for different clues? I'm interested in your perspective, Megan, because you got to see a lot of plants in your former role. Yeah, I think that there's definitely something to that. I mean, when you, I think when you think about outside of a meat plant, right, walking into some place where no one talks to you doesn't feel good, right, at all. And so I think if that's just the first indication of the culture that you're walking into is that no one wants you to be there and no one wants to talk to you. Obviously not great. But I do think, I do think there's maybe something to that. Right. I think about the plants that I visited both within JBS and then outside of when working with them. I do think that there was something about, you know, people being willing to help people. I mean, like, I think about this like simple things, right. So this is, just a little small example of, is there a paper towel on the floor, like outside the bathroom, right? Like the hallway, the locker room there, like do seven team people walk over that or does the first person pick it up? So like just something small like that of an indication that, you know, it's really from the, from the top down. And I think one of the things that became pretty, I guess is evident to me or through those is like the succession planning and the type of leader that you know, really takes that executive toolkit or the questions around that and has like put that into practice. Um, and then even as like a general manager of a plant who's responsible for, for all of the things, they might not be the strongest in food safety. Maybe they came up through, through fabrication or through harvest and they're leading with those skills, but then specifically within food safety, relying on their team, but are they bringing together, um, the people in a succession planning way of getting people exposure across where your food safety person who started as an, you know, just a food safety team member and then became a manager and then is, you know, going to be a leader in food safety, making them uncomfortable and taking them to a cross training opportunity in harvest or in fabrication. So they truly understand everyone else's role too. So you're building a stronger team over time. is one of the things that at least I noticed that I think really drove teams that were stronger within culture and definitely stronger around food safety culture specifically. Yeah, it looks really different when you spend even a few hours in somebody's world, doesn't it? It does. I think about the support that you have when it comes to executive toolkit, when it comes to conversations. One of the areas that I know we get often asked about is middle managers. So we often are talking about the middle manager squeeze and how they are not only responsible for the doing and making sure it happens, but also this communication up, down, across. I'm curious, what do you notice about being in the industry and the support or maybe the support that's needed for middle managers, because they do carry a heavy load. And not just about from safety, around everything. I would, when we were thinking about the different topics, this is something that was constantly in my head. What does it look like when a company, in my opinion, is doing it well? And that's when there is a plan and a program for those middle managers. It's not just, you know, Casey showed up to work every day. She did her job really good. And so we're going to promote her. And just now she's in charge of a bunch of people. Well, does Casey know how to be in charge of people? Does she know anything about managing people? Does she, is that a skill she has? Just because she was really good at boning hams does not mean that she's going to be good at leading twenty people who are boning hams. And I think companies that understand that you know, it's great to promote a person who's been working really hard for you and showing really great signs. But if you don't give them the tools to take on that next job, you're setting them up to fail. And that's not fair. So I think there's some really great examples out there of companies who are providing that support as they promote employees to that next level. There are some companies that have some really phenomenal management programs. So before you ever take a middle management position, you get truly dedicated training. You rotate facilities when it's a bigger company. And you don't have to be a bigger company to do it well. There's plenty of smaller companies that are doing it well. But if we promote people and we fail to set them up for the next set of skills that they need, that's on us. And we have failed that person. And we need to think about that when we promote people too. You know, just because I'm not good at boning hands, I would like you to know that I'm terrible at boning hands. But let's say that I'm really good at boning hands. I may not be good at leading people. I may not even want to lead people. Did you ask me? Did you think about that when you decided to promote me? Or was there someone next to me that maybe isn't as good at boning hands? They're really good at leading people. And they would naturally be a better fit. It's something they want to do, and they'd be excited to learn something different. And I think we have to think about that. It's great that we want to promote people who are doing a great job, but we need to find the right way to highlight those people. And for a lot of them, it's not leadership. That's not what they're interested in. Yeah. And I think you bring up a great point because often people are like, yeah, you get promoted and you move in. And if you find out then that you're like, this doesn't really work. But sometimes people feel stuck. They're like, oh, OK, now I'm in this role. And like, what do I do? It's not going as well as I hoped. But sometimes even stepping back from that isn't something that's maybe allowed or seen as like a good move. And so they feel like they're in the spot. So even as you talk about it, they do. And so I love when I hear of companies that not only do they offer them opportunities to try that, they also give them the safeguard of like, if you find this isn't your jam, we have a spot here for you because we still want you as part of our team in some form, whatever that looks like, where we can use your strengths. Absolutely. That reassurance for people as well, like taking a chance also means that there's still something available for them. Yeah. Of course, I'm completely biased because, of course, Catalyst being in the leadership space, that is our goal. How do we set people up for success? How do we help companies set people up for success when they maybe aren't able to have those internal programs or even the progressive leadership programs to help people as they go from maybe early leadership to even then directors or senior managers where there's a different skill set. But I do think there are times where in the industry we think it's just a training problem. And it is a bit of a training problem, but it's even a little bit more of just that strategy with organizations. I'm curious, once again, you all have this broader perspective of what's happening in the industry. And so It may be leadership, but there's a whole lot of other things that are challenges right now. What are some of the things that are top challenges and that you see that maybe or maybe don't trace back to leadership or solving that problem? I was going to go back real quick and then can we go to that? Sorry. I thought of something really good that we were talking about when we're talking about frontline managers and training there. Sorry. So we just had our solution summit, had a session on, um, frontline, basically exactly what we're just talking about on frontline supervisor, um, succession planning. Um, and we just launched a, um, assessment tool, um, and a report, um, along those lines about, um, Like, how does your organization identify your frontline employees who are succeeding like Casey at Boningham's, amazingly, in what their next step should be? So, like, it's ten questions, takes about three minutes. So just a shameless plug that we did just work on a resource that hopefully we'll be able to help people with that, knowing that, you know, we have... about twenty five percent of the food plant workers like maybe retiring by twenty thirty. And so we have this huge this huge gap of, you know, frontline employees. And then also that whole conundrum of like, is this does this person want to be in that leadership role? So sorry, just wanted to know. I love that. And we're going to make sure we put links in the show notes to that and to the executive leadership tool and also to the LMS so that we can have people like be able to click on those really easily. So, yeah. No, and you bring up a good point, like in the industry. And I guess, does this even lead into some of that question? Like some of the broader, broader things that you're seeing, because not only are people leaving, but, you know, keep talking about even baby boomers are still retiring ten thousand a day. And so we're just having these gaps in the workforce in general. Is that the biggest, you know, the biggest issue or challenge facing the industry right now? It's a significant one. Yeah, I was gonna say the biggest one, I think our coming being like fresh out of our solution summit where we kind of refocus that meeting on to annual member meeting and bringing broader topics versus it being like more sustainability focused in the past for that conference really helped at least put into perspective kind of we have a lot of members in our in the Meat Institute's membership and then the broader industry, right, who are facing a lot of different challenges from the labor challenge to many others. So I think that's probably one of the top one is the labor challenge right now. This is what I love about technology. Sometimes it works seamlessly and other times gaps. That's okay. Oh, here is Megan. All right. Maybe it's just my, it's just, it's just my West Texas internet. It's terrible right now. No, that's okay. No, I'm so glad you're talking about the solution summit. So yeah. Yeah. So I think one of the, the, the, one of the challenges we highlighted there was labor. I think there's, there's many that are top of mind right now across, across the industry. Yeah. And I'll, I'll just add that, um, I think one of the significant issues we're having industry-wide is this loss of institutional knowledge and leadership. Because you're right, the boomers are retiring and congratulations to them. I'm still looking way too far down the road to get excited about retirement. But we do kind of have this weird gap. There are many days that I look around and I'm like, where is Gen X? Are they still there? Do they exist? We don't We don't seem to have a ton of Gen X in the meat industry. We have a lot of baby boomers and we have a lot of millennials, but we don't really have a ton in that median group. And so we are seeing a lot of institutional knowledge leave both within the industry and at our regulators. The federal government, the loss of institutional knowledge over the last couple of years has been a huge hit to the industry. So that's a challenge. And that's something that, you know, Megan and I work on a lot is, you know, how can we help fill that gap of institutional knowledge? That's something that we can maybe help with, right? Just getting people labor, not generally something that we can be overly helpful with, but we'd love to. But there's also some real economic hardships right now. And so it's really hard, you know, especially if you're in the beef industry right now, like you're just trying to keep the lights on. And if you're just trying to keep the lights on, Anything more that we're asking of you is extra hard. I mean, we're asking you to continue to still do all the right things to make food safe, to take care of your people, to think forward and future looking. And that's really hard when you're rubbing pennies together. And there's not really a bright light coming anytime soon. for that sector. And I'm not saying it's overly easy on the pork side either. It's not necessarily the same, but there's still a lot of economic challenges right now. And so I would probably put the economic challenges as like the hardest thing right now. Because, you know, we're hoping we banked enough in good times to make it through the hard times right now. And that is not an easy place for companies to be. No, and that's a really great lens to look at it. I mean, we're at some really pivotal moments in the industry as well with what's being seen. And some things are certainly more heavily driven by external factors than internal factors. As you think about that, maybe even at the summit last week, what kind of things may be surfaced on like the direction or where things can change or need to change to help, whether it's the economic part or the institutional knowledge that's being lost. How did that look from those conversations? Casey, do you want to jump in or do you want me to go ahead? I'll start and then you can clean up where I leave off. We talked about a lot of different, I mean, it's called the solution summit, right? We're trying to figure out what those solutions are. And I think there is a lot of power in just working on what you can control to the best of your ability. So I think there was a lot of optimism at the summit, which was great to see. So even though we were talking about these really hard times on the economic side and not necessarily easy labor side, there was a lot of optimism in talking about what we can control. In the meat industry, we have some optimism in that people are excited about protein and natural sources of protein, like animal-based products. So that's something that we can leverage and lean on. We talked about some exciting ways to leverage AI to just be more efficient and do more with what you have. But I think that's kind of the theme that I took away is how can we do more with what we have today? And you know, just be as efficient as we can. I think one of the other things we had some really great leadership lessons that we were talking through. So we had Jared Gillick from Cargill's team there. And I think that one of the things that he talked about was resiliency. And so I really like that Casey brought that up too, of like, you know, defining resiliency for your organization. And if that means through these like tough economic times of, you know, figuring out how you're going to keep the lights on. Oh no, the West Texas internet. Yeah. Sorry, if I'm back. Resiliency, I think, was one of the themes that we saw throughout. And then I really liked, we had one session, which we didn't have a ton of people in, which was on cybersecurity, which I know is a passion of Casey's, but on making sure you're thinking about all the parts and pieces there too of where might you have opportunity to have a weakness there that you can pull that in. I know that's hard with the economic challenges that everyone's facing right now, but I do think that there was some good lessons there too. Yeah, that's a really good point because even when they're when there are hard times like cybersecurity, like those attacks aren't going away. And they're probably just watching for when different industries, not just the food industry or meat industry are at vulnerable moments and looking at that. So those are really good insights to think about because it is more, there's so many moving parts when you think about working in the meat industry and the food industry. One of the things that I really admire is that you both have chosen careers that are about advancing the industry, not just working inside of it. And I'm curious, as you think about forward looking, where you see advocating the most is making the most impact or where you really hope to see changes that impact real outcomes and what those are. What kind of fuels you as you go forward? That's a really good question. You know, I mentioned that, you know, I got this, I got my start in this industry. Megan's story is more traditional. There's a lot of people in the meat industry. They knew they were going to be in the meat industry and they grew up, you know, in ag and it's a very, that was in their blood and that's what they were going to do. Mine was an accident and I ended up here, but I stayed here. for the people. And that is probably what gives me the most hope for the future is that we have some incredible, amazing people who are passionate about what they're doing. And that can only lead to good things, I think. So I think that makes me really excited. I think we've got a lot of great opportunity to continue on some really great work in the food safety space. I mean, we kind of get phone calls essentially from other industries that are saying like, hey, what are you guys doing on food safety? Because we do have a pretty good track record of attacking issues and addressing things like food safety. So I think we've got great foundation there to keep building on. And I think we've got a good framework to continue to address challenges. One of the coolest things about working in a trade association is is that we do get this insight into kind of the broader industry and what all different players are doing. And we are a space to bring those people together to attack industry wide issues and to address industry wide challenges. And that's just really fun, I think. And it's part of what makes this job really fun and interesting. And when our members get together to address pre-competitive challenges like food safety or cybersecurity, they can do some pretty amazing things. So I'm excited. Again, food safety is near and dear to my heart, so that's one that always comes up. But I think we have a lot of opportunities to solve a lot of challenges if we work together. Yeah, I would agree on that. I think reflecting on the time that I spent in industry, I worked with a lot of great people who are really passionate about what they did every day. And that was very internal to the organization that I worked with. Right. And so when we talk about, you know, you're trying to outdo your competitor and, you know, like that was the like internal mantra. And I think probably because I spent more of my time not on a food safety team and more on, you know, product management in a product management role. So one of the things that's been really great is seeing that non-competitive issue space where we bring our members together through the Meat Institute to work on those non-competitive issues. And I'm excited about this next year for us expanding our LMS outside of food safety into a couple other areas that we're looking at developing some courses in. I don't want to give too much away, but that we're developing some courses in more like workforce topics. that I think are going to be really great additions to our content there. I just have so much, like, passion. I didn't realize this, like, I know it's a personal note, I didn't realize this when I was in industry of how much I missed working on education and bringing people together in these, like, thought leadership roles. And it's really, like, fueled my passion. It's like, dang internet. It's fueled back my passion. Give us the insight on that personal note. Oh, there you are. Okay. It's really fueled my passion of bringing people together to learn from each other, to grow, to, you know, internalize the lessons that we're bringing through our conferences. And we really strive through all of the educational opportunities that we have and host throughout the year. to be able to bring people together to drive the industry forward, whether that's environment, labor and safety content at our ELS conference or animal care and handling at our animal care and handling conference. Or if it's, you know, getting more people at our Listeria workshops to give them more advanced education there. I think, I think that's one of the things that really drives me. And I'm really excited about being a part of the meat Institute that we can convene people to move their specific area forward. Yeah, the Meat Institute is doing some amazing work. And, you know, I'm also going to plug a little bit, like I've been lucky to be part of the women, the women in the meat industry group, their mentor program as a mentor and as a mentee. And I think about the programs that you're putting together, but this is another one that I think about how valuable it is for people to stay connected, and especially with this one, women staying connected, because they also stay longer. And there's this genuine business outcome from women feeling connected, contributing, engaging, and helping move things forward. You know, I, I love what it does. I love that the group sponsors it. And I'm curious if, you know, if you have anything that you'd like to share around the program and of course we'll drop a link for, for this, for people in the show notes as well, but have you been part of it? What do you hear about it? Just a little bit about mentorship. Uh, the Mead Institute has been a proud partner at the Women's Beauty Industry Network since it started, which, um, women. Women's Meat Industry Network is getting ready to celebrate its five year anniversary. And the Meat Institute has been a partner from the beginning, which is super exciting. And it has been this wonderful space to focus on mentoring. I will tell you, when I started in the industry, I worked kind of in like smaller parts of the industry. And so I didn't have a lot of opportunities for mentorship. Some of the larger, more mature companies have these really great programs internally, and they've got these different people they can leverage. But a lot of our smaller companies or even medium sized companies, they don't have that same network of people. So Women has created this network across companies, which is super cool. I have participated both as a mentor and a mentee. I've gotten so much out of it, and it's a great opportunity. I'm very proud to work for the Mute Institute, who has dedicated this partnership to this group, because I think it does nothing but good things, right? We benefit as an industry from having diverse perspectives. So if we can strengthen our women in this industry, we're going to strengthen the whole industry. And women, naturally, aren't as good at creating their own network. We need a nudge. And I will raise my hand and say I needed a nudge. And this organization has really helped me personally to expand my network and grow in ways I didn't realize I would. And I think if you're not leveraging that, you should be. And it is open to all. It is not strictly for women. I also am part of women. I joined women before I was a part of the Meat Institute. So I've been on their professional enrichment committee. So besides the mentorship, they put on really great webinars. I will shamelessly say we put on some good webinars. But the mentorship, too, for sure, has been one of the best things that I participated in. I connected with a mentor on there. I haven't been a mentor yet. I put a pause on that this year with the new baby and the move and all the things we got going on personally. I was like, it's just a little tight on bandwidth, but I'm looking forward to being a mentor next year too. So. That's awesome. All right. We've covered a lot of different spaces today. So I'm curious as we kind of are looking at kind of wrapping up today, what do you hope somebody listening or we haven't even go a step further. What do you want every leader in the industry to, to take away or do differently after being part of the show today? I'll go. I think that we'd be remiss if we didn't say join women, if you're not a part of that, because Sharon Beals would kick me if I didn't say that. But also, I think being like open and willing to look at things differently. And then I think the way that we set up this, you know, you really put yourself in other shoes. So we talked about both the like succession planning of, you know, for within a, within a plant or within your company of, you know, cross-training and having people look at different perspectives. But then I also think of like the, you know, really putting yourself in if, if, if you're the auditor going in, try to emulate what that's going to feel like, you know, in preparation to just give your, your culture a check there of, you know, not just for an audit, but, if that's what it takes to set the tone of like, this is how we're going to assess how this feels and how the beginning feels there. I think that's a good place to start. That's great. I'll go back to Carrie and Coker's words from the solution summit and that people will do what they're incentivized to do. And as a leader, what are you incentivizing? Are you incentivizing compliance? Are you incentivizing a true commitment? Are you incentivizing people to speak up? Is that something that, is open in your company. If you don't hear from a lot of people in your company, that's probably not a good sign. If you're hearing a lot from a lot of different people, good, bad, or indifferent, that's probably a really good sign in that people feel open to bringing things up throughout the company. So what are you incentivizing? And is it really what you want to be incentivizing? Wow, both fantastic takeaways, right? Just even that noticing and incentivizing is such a huge deal because oftentimes, even though we say we have open door policies, it comes back down to leadership and behaviors. Like if we're running around and we always have things to do and people sense that it's not really always a good time, it maybe doesn't always have the door open for them to actually step through it. you know, taking those steps and maybe having a mentor to help you. How do I navigate that and stepping into that and just recognizing where you're at for culture through a new lens can be really eye opening. So Casey and Megan, fantastic to have you here today. Thank you for spending time. I know you've been on the road for weeks and had a lot of things going on. And yet you carved out time on this Monday morning to be here. So thank you so much. Happy to do it. Thanks for having us, Jill. Oh, absolutely. And if you're listening and as we walk through this today, if you had a moment where you thought, I recognize that we might have a gap or I have some questions about culture and leadership in my organization, we are going to put a link in our show notes because we have a resource for you. It's to help look at the gap between what you want culture to be and what the reality is on where your culture is today so that you can have a an honest look at like, what does that mean? And what are the next steps for you? So we always say leadership is not a one person show. Culture does not grow on its own and it really does take intention. So that's today's real talk. We hope to see you next week. Thanks everyone.
