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Web Series by ComGroup Hails Women in Industry

4 min read

Brandy Rennicke Carroll recalls seeing farming behind the Iron Curtain as a teenager, “everything from the biggest tractors I’ve ever seen to a man plowing a small field with a mule.”

Janeé Parker describes her job keeping Little Debbie snack cakes fresh and tasty as a food safety specialist at McKee Foods’ 1,500-employee bakery at Gentry, a job she didn’t even realize existed when she was growing up in Bentonville.

Kisia Weeks tells of getting strange looks from acquaintances when they learn she teaches agriculture and advises the Future Farmers of America at White Hall High School. “People have a hard time believing I teach the ‘shop class,’” including welding, woodworking, plumbing and electrical work, she says.

All those stories are online at Comgroup.com, part of Little Rock marketing firm The Communications Group’s Women in Industry series, which rolled out in November and will continue through the year. The series recognizes women in the industries the agency serves, particularly agriculture, industrial manufacturing and the government-to-citizen sector.

The women featured tell their own stories, answering a series of questions. The first batch, all in agriculture, “aren’t women you just see on tractors,” said Lisa Van Hook, the agency’s director of client services and executive vice president.

“You typically think of agriculture and manufacturing as a man’s world: shop floor, heavy machinery, etc.,” Van Hook continued. “Well, it turns out that a lot of decision-makers and people in authority in these fields are women.”

Carroll, for example, is commodities and market information director for the Arkansas Farm Bureau Federation, and she didn’t always want to work in agriculture, even though her father, Joe Rennicke of Weiner, is a well-known farmer and founding member of USA Rice.

“When I was little, I wanted to be a dancer and an astronaut, and spent many hours in dance class and attended Space Camp,” Carroll said in her profile. But the trip to the Soviet Union was a crossroads, she said. “A global perspective at a young age cemented my belief that I wanted to focus my future on agriculture.” She said she was inspired by her maternal grandmother, Ruth White, who welded in a San Francisco shipyard while Carroll’s grandfather, J.D. White, fought in World War II. “She never stopped teaching us to be independent and strong.”

Lindsey Holtzclaw, a communications specialist for Farm Credit of Western Arkansas and another honoree, grew up on a small cattle operation in Damascus and says women face the same challenge and opportunity every day: proving themselves. “It’s no secret that women are not considered the norm in the world of agriculture,” Holtzclaw said. “The greatest challenge … is proving ourselves as capable.” The greatest opportunity is the wide field of opportunity in ag, she said. “Whether it’s farming, business, financing, science, communications or something else that sparks your passion — you can find your fit in ag.”

Carson Horn, a PR manager who joined ComGroup last year, initiated the Women in Industry project and said it drove up engagement on the firm’s Facebook page and blossomed on social media. “If you look at the demographics, we’re also drawing a younger audience on Facebook now.” Horn succeeded Jason Brown, a 10-year ComGroup employee who left to do PR for Indigo Ag, an ag tech company in the Boston area. Brown still works out of Little Rock.

Horn said two events planted the idea for the series on women: Last year, the Future Farmers of America celebrated the 50th anniversary of allowing girls into the group, a decision made by the all-male student board in 1969. In another 2019 development, the American Farm Bureau Federation “did a study on women in agribusiness and found significant interest among women wanting careers in agriculture. So now we’re seeing it build its own momentum,” Horn said.

He noted the path of Evette Browning, who was taught the value of hard work growing up in Los Angeles, never thinking she’d eventually be minority outreach coordinator for the Arkansas Department of Agriculture. “I’ve always found myself helping people,” she said in her profile.

“I wasn’t sure how that would take shape in my career, but outreach fits perfectly.”

She serves as a resource to landowners, educating “underserved audiences and connecting them to resources they can take advantage of.”

Van Hook said that as a woman in business, she’s proud of the project. “When you allow a woman leader to tell her own story, they don’t just tell you about the position they’re in now. They tell you almost their whole life story. They build a narrative around their life.”

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