People

Mason Roberts is a peanut, cotton, and cattle farmer from Sylvester, Ga. He and his wife, Haley, have two children, Hudson (4), and Emma (2). Roberts is a 4th generation farmer working daily alongside his father, Michael, and brother, Chase. He is one of the two 2024 TFI 4R Advocates and thoroughly enjoys being able to advocate for peers and fellow farmers thus far and looks forward to continuing to do so in the future. Outside of farming he enjoys serving in his church, camping with his family, and any form of hunting you can imagine, especially deer and dove. Roberts and his brother were the 2023 Young Farmers of the year for their county and recognized as such in the Georgia Peanut Festival Parade in Sylvester, Ga. Going forward Roberts aspires to be Georgia’s Peanut Farmer of the year. 

Emily Haley is a seasoned strategic communications and engagement professional that loves good stories and digging into what makes audiences tick. Prior to joining Environmental Initiative, she managed communications and engagement activities at Pacific Blu, a renewable energy developer, owner, and operator in Melbourne, Australia. She liaised with wind and solar farm host communities and supported internal and external communications for the business.

Emily currently directs the communications function and leads the communications team at the nonprofit Environmental Initiative. She is passionate about the outdoors, cooking, photography, and brands leading as a force for good.

 [DCM1]I like “liaised” over “interfaced” 🙂

Director, Strategic Partnerships & Communications

Deborah Carter McCoy is an accomplished leader who delivers strategic solutions, successful partnerships, and baked goods to meetings. Over the course of her career, she has deftly sought to combine the disciplines of communications, policy, planning, and project management to achieve the goals and fulfill the mission of any organization with which she is aligned.

She is a purpose-driven professional who is often overheard chatting about robust community engagement, integrated transportation networks, the nuances of household sustainability practices, and her backyard bird sanctuary.

At Environmental Initiative, she is focused on agriculture network engagement, communications strategy, and developing creative partnerships aimed at delivering solutions to vexing and complex challenges.

Andrew Focht owns and operates Paylly Farms in southwestern Iowa. He has strong roots in farming and soil health, beginning his career with the Natural Resources Conservation Service and farming with his family for nearly two decades before striking out on his own about three years ago.

Two years ago, Andrew joined Total Acre, a program where hundreds of progressive growers around the country learn about implementing calculated best practices that maximize ROI. This segued into joining Frontier Fields, a docuseries following six farmers who provide their insights and observations as they trial Mosaic biologicals throughout the year.

When Andrew isn’t farming, co-hosting his podcast or crunching numbers, he enjoys spending time with his wife Karla, and their two children, Lilly and Payton.

Jack Cornell grew up in rural Southwestern Ohio, where he found his passion in maximizing the benefits of both native ecosystems as well as cropping systems. Jack worked for Monsanto for 9 years where he enjoyed advancing the latest technologies for farmers while incorporating sustainability practices. Jack has worked the last 8 years for Corn and Soybean farmer lead commodity organizations to strive for continual improvements around sustainability in agriculture as he believes it will help farmers achieve maximum profitability.

Popular Political Analyst, Commentator, and Best-Selling Author

For more than two decades, Chris Stirewalt has been a leading and trusted voice in U.S. politics. One of today’s liveliest political commentators, he is highly regarded for his candid and straightforward analysis of our current political climate — using his signature ‘tell-it-like-it-is’ approach to cover the most significant issues of the day and provide his expert outlook for the future. Stirewalt is also the bestselling author of the books Broken News: How the Media Rage Machine Divides America and How to Fight Back, a deeply researched, conversation-provoking study of today’s profit-driven news cycle and how it can be repaired, as well as Every Man a King, a dynamic account of America’s populist tradition. Today, Stirewalt is the political editor for NewsNation, America’s fastest growing cable news channel.

Exclusively represented by Leading Authorities speakers bureau, Stirewalt is an expert storyteller and astute speaker who keeps audiences engrossed with his trademark humor while breaking down complex political issues. He offers candid and witty insights on the current political climate and the latest happenings on Capitol Hill and in the White House, as well as a breakdown of how our political party system reached its current state of polarization and what he sees coming down the pike in Washington and across the nation. Stirewalt is a quickly rising star on news and within political circles whose speeches offer the perfect balance between meaty and hard-hitting takeaways and entertaining personal and professional anecdotes.

In addition to being the political editor as NewsNation, Stirewalt is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, focusing on American politics, voting trends, public opinion, and the media. He is also a contributing editor for The Dispatch, where he publishes a weekly column and his newsletter, Stirewalt on Politics. As co-host of the “Ink Stained Wretches”podcast, he helps listeners cut through media bias and separate fact from fiction in the news they consume.

Previously, Stirewalt served as the politics editor for Fox News Channel, where he helped coordinate political coverage across Fox. While at Fox, Stirewalt appeared in front of some of the largest audiences in cable news history, including tens of millions of viewers for debate and election night coverage. The podcast he co-hosted with Dana Perino, “I’ll Tell You What,”was so successful that it was spun off into a television show of the same name leading up to the 2016 election — an industry first. Joining FNC’s Washington bureau in 2010, Stirewalt made daily appearances on multiple Fox network programs, including America’s Newsroom, Outnumbered, Special Report with Bret Baier, and Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace. He was also a part of the Fox News Decision Desk team, where he called races on election nights, and hosted the Fox Nation Halftime Report streaming show.

Prior to joining FNC, Stirewalt served as political editor for The Washington Examiner where he wrote a twice-weekly column and led political coverage for the newspaper. He also served as politics editor at the Charleston Daily Mail and West Virginia Media. Stirewalt began his career at the Wheeling Intelligencer in West Virginia.

He is a graduate of Hampden-Sydney College in Virginia.

Vatren Jurin, DunhamTrimmer’s Chief Technology Officer and a Partner, boasts an impressive career spanning over 30 years and focusing on identifying and scaling groundbreaking technology. Specializing in plant nutrition, adjuvant technology, biostimulants, seed treatment, and sustainable crop protectants, his contributions have been pivotal in generating nearly $1 billion in revenue growth for various organizations. Vatren’s expertise covers a wide spectrum, including product development, evaluation, mergers and acquisitions, and international regulatory compliance in the fields of agronomy, horticulture, fertigation, aquatics, and ornamentals.

A respected authority in agricultural innovation, Vatren is a go-to speaker at leading forums globally. He has delivered more than 500 presentations at customer events and training sessions. His insights are often sought after by leading industry publications to shed light on the future directions of agronomy and sustainable agriculture. Vatren holds multiple patents and has co-authored and collaborated on an array of scientific papers, solidifying his standing as an industry thought leader.

Ranveer Chandra is the Managing Director for Research for Industry, and the CTO of Agri-Food at Microsoft. He also leads the Networking Research Group at Microsoft Research, Redmond. Previously, Ranveer was the Chief Scientist of Microsoft Azure Global. His research has shipped as part of multiple Microsoft products, including VirtualWiFi in Windows 7 onwards, low power Wi-Fi in Windows 8, Energy Profiler in Visual Studio, Software Defined Batteries in Windows 10, and the Wireless Controller Protocol in XBOX One. His research also led to a new product, called Azure Data Manager for Agriculture. Ranveer is active in the networking and systems research community, and has served as the Program Committee Chair of IEEE DySPAN 2012, and ACM MobiCom 2013.

Ranveer has published more than 100 papers, and holds over 150 patents granted by the USPTO. His research has been cited by the popular press, such as the Economist, MIT Technology Review, BBC, Scientific American, New York Times, WSJ, among others. He is an IEEE Fellow and an ACM Fellow, and has won several awards, including best paper awards at ACM CoNext 2008, ACM SIGCOMM 2009, IEEE RTSS 2014, USENIX ATC 2015, Runtime Verification 2016 (RV’16), ACM COMPASS 2019, and ACM MobiCom 2019, the Microsoft Research Graduate Fellowship, the Microsoft Gold Star Award, the MIT Technology Review’s Top Innovators Under 35, TR35 (2010) and Fellow in Communications, World Technology Network (2012). He was recently recognized by the Newsweek magazine as America’s 50 most Disruptive Innovators (2021). Ranveer has an undergraduate degree from IIT Kharagpur, India and a PhD from Cornell University.

Chad Hart was born and raised in southwest Missouri and his parents raised a few cattle and operated a small meat locker. Chad received a B.S. in economics with minors in mathematics, history, and astronomy from Southwest Missouri State University in 1991. He moved to Iowa in the summer of 1991 to pursue graduate education and received a Ph.D. in economics and statistics in 1999 from Iowa State University. 

Upon graduation, Chad worked as a researcher at CARD at Iowa State. Then he joined the faculty in 2008. His main research areas are in agricultural marketing and risk management.