From left: Hannah Thompson-Weeman, Animal Ag Alliance; Katie Ertmer, Filament; NAMA President Sara Steever, Paulsen; and Lacey Fielder, Signal Theory.
The
National Agri-Marketing Association (NAMA) honored the winners of the Next Gen NAMA Award at the 2021 Agri-Marketing Conference, July 20-22 in Kansas City. This award was developed to celebrate the next generation of leaders. Honorees are nominated from within their company or through chapter or national leadership.
The recipients for 2021 are:
Katie Ertmer – Senior Manager, Client Lead at Filament. Katie has worked in the field of marketing and communications for more than 10 years, ranging from in-house marketing to agencies. She has been with Filament more than half of her marketing career and has grown from an executive level position to a senior manager position over the course of this time. Katie has taken a leadership role within the Filament business, leading a key account and mentoring and growing a team of 17 individuals within this key account. She is active in NAMA and has served on the Badger Chapter Board as membership chair, communications chair and student chapter liaison.
Lacey Fielder – Associate Public Relations Director at Signal Theory. Through her 10 years at Signal Theory and 12 years in the industry, Lacey Fielder has led public relations efforts for numerous agriculture and animal health clients, including Merial/Boehringer Ingelheim, Merck, FMC , Kinze, NAMI and AgroLiquid. Her work has led to numerous Best of NAMA awards, including many firsts and a regional Public Relations “Best of Show” for her client Merck Swine. Lacey has been an active NAMA member since her undergrad days at K-State majoring in Agriculture Communications and Journalism. She has best a Best of NAMA judge at the Regional and National level, participated in many panels and recently presented a webinar for NAMA.
Hannah Thompson-Weeman – Vice President, Strategic Engagement at Animal Agriculture Alliance. Hannah was promoted in Jan 2021 to this new position because of her demonstrated leadership & engagement with key stakeholders and influencers outside of animal agriculture directly. Hannah has delivered well over 100 presentations to audiences across the U.S. and four other countries on topics including issues management, crisis communications and proactive influencer engagement. She continues to lead the issues management, communications and media engagement efforts, and the Alliance’s media coverage doubled during Hannah’s years at Animal Agriculture Alliance. Hannah has been a member of NAMA since 2013 and has attended conferences and has presented two webinars for NAMA.
2021 Agri-Marketing Conference Photo Album
The ag retail model is on the cusp of a transformation, as more and more technology is introduced to the market. This technology is making it easier to connect with and provide value to farmers, but also requires ag retail to adopt these new methods to stay relevant in today’s ever-changing world. 
Those attending this year’s Ag Media Summit in Kansas City had the opportunity to hear about some new products recently launched by 
A family business still operating on the farm is changing the world of sprayers with 