Anyone involved in agriculture is familiar with the name Ed Johnson. Ohio State alum Matt Reese said that a visit from Ed Johnson to the Reese family’s Christmas tree farm that Matt worked at as a high schooler, was what inspired him to get into agricultural communication. Little did Matt know that just a few short years after meeting Ed Johnson, he would be working for Ed at “Ohio’s Country Journal.”

While an undergrad in agricultural communication, Matt Reese worked for several years as the photo editor for the “Lantern.” With a position at The Ohio State University’s student-published newspaper, Matt was allowed the opportunity to be an “agvocate” before that was ever a thing. After spending his years in college spreading awareness of agriculture through both his relationships at the “Lantern” and performing with the OSU Men’s Glee Club, Matt graduated in 1999 only to then earn his master’s in agricultural education.

With one quarter left of classes before graduation, Matt landed his dream job as the assistant editor of “Ohio’s Country Journal.” Matt now serves as the editor. Matt divulged that the job has allowed him to develop a huge number of friendships and professional relationship with some of the best people in the world — Ohio’s farmers and agribusiness professionals.

As the editor, Matt oversees the editorial content of “Ohio’s Country Journal,” as well as posting daily content on their website. With a small staff, Matt says that he does a little bit of everything, including video work and occasional radio interviews, although he mostly focuses his energy and attention on writing, content development, and photography.

Talking about his job, Matt also admits, “I have also gained in depth knowledge on an incredibly broad array of issues impacting and impacted by the world’s most important industry and vocation: agriculture. It is so humbling and rewarding to play even my small role in such an important and vital endeavor. I believe one of God’s greatest gifts to mankind is the set of miracles that take place as a matter of course in the regular cycles required for agriculture to produce products deemed valuable by society. What an honor it is to be able to serve such an industry!”

When asked to give advice to prospective or current students, Matt was a wealth of information. Below is a list of Matt’s Top 12 Pieces of Advice:

1. Figure out what you are good at and what you are not so good at, then capitalize on your strengths and strengthen your weaknesses. Success is a combination of maximizing your strengths, but also understanding what you are not so good at and either improving or relying on others in those areas.
2. Be extremely careful about feeling like you deserve anything. You don’t. No one owes you anything. The second you start to feel entitled to something is the second that you need to realize that you don’t deserve it. Think about that and remember it — that applies to EVERYTHING.
3. Do not make decisions based upon fear, selfishness or a feeling of entitlement, but instead upon doing what is right by God and others. Doing this is not easy, but extremely worthwhile long term (even if it doesn’t seem like it short term).
4. Celebrate and enjoy what you have relentlessly instead of wishing for what you do not have. But, at the same time, relentlessly set goals to make yourself better at serving others.
5. Get off your phone and learn how to read people and interact face to face. This will give you an automatic advantage in nearly every professional interpersonal situation.
6. Learn to manage your time, your actions, and your words based on a clear set of personal priorities. My suggested priorities in order: God, spouse, children, extended family, work, everything else, self.
7. Take care of your health through moderation and exercise. The days you do not break a sweat should be a rarity.
8. Don’t drink too much pop.
9. Being kind and forgiving others is really a favor to yourself.
10. Make sure your heroes deserve to be your heroes (they often don’t)
11. Network and make friends everywhere you go and in everything you do.
12. Every career is ultimately about people.

Matt Reese with daughter Campbell

Although Jenny Wensink now calls herself a Falcon, as serves as a faculty member at Bowling Green State University, she will always be a Buckeye. Graduating from Ohio State in 2006 with a degree in agricultural communication, Jenny started her career working as a sales and marketing communications specialist for Select Sires Inc., writing press releases and working on design and content for their customer newsletter.

Three years later in 2010, Jenny came back to Ohio State and the College of Food, Agricultural, and Environmental Sciences where she served the college in a fundraising capacity. She managed a portfolio of alumni and friends who supported Ohio State through gifts of $1,000 up to $250,000. A year later, in 2011, Jenny transitioned into a similar role at Bowling Green State University.

Starting off as assistant director of annual giving, Jenny planned reunion events and fundraising efforts while also managing a portfolio of lead annual donors.  Five years later and Jenny is still at BGSU, although she is now in the position of director of annual giving. This position has Jenny managing the overall annual giving strategy for the 170,000 living BGSU alumni. This includes managing direct mail, their phon-a-thon, and online giving channels, while also coordinating the faculty and staff giving campaign, and overseeing stewardship of annual giving programs. Although her present role doesn’t require her to be involved in the agricultural industry, Jenny says that her degree certainly prepared her well for her career. In addition to being the director of annual giving at BGSU, Jenny is currently working toward a master’s degree in public administration and should finish in 2017.

As for advice to students, Jenny says, “If you are lucky enough to receive scholarships, take a moment to learn about the people who donated those funds. In my work at Ohio State and now at BGSU, I have a better understanding of how much private giving impacts the college experience and my hope is that all students learn more about philanthropy on campus and how they can become philanthropists in their own way.”

Jenny’s husband Mark is also a CFAES grad and is an equipment salesman for Wood County Implement, a John Deere dealership. The Wensinks have two children – Emery is 5 and Beau is 1.  Outside of family time, Jenny loves CrossFit, running, reading, and of course watching college football-Go Bucks!

Jenny Wensink today.

In 2003, with no agricultural background, and majoring in construction systems management, Ohio State freshman Curtis Niedermier could have never dreamed he’d graduate with a degree in agricultural communication. Always wanting to be a writer, Curtis found out that the College of Food, Agricultural, and Environmental Sciences not only offered construction systems management as a major, but also agricultural communication. Although he switched majors, Curtis was in the honors program so he was still able to stay on track and graduate in 4 years.

Following graduation in 2007, Curtis moved to Benton, Kentucky to work for FLW (Fishing League Worldwide), the largest tournament fishing organization in the world. Just two weeks after receiving his OSU diploma, Curtis was associate editor for FLW’s print publications. He moved up in ranks first to managing editor of their magazine, to his position now as editor-in-chief for FLW Bass Fishing magazine and the FLW website. Taking up a lot of his time is managing a staff of eight, in addition to a lot of freelance contributors, and covering a couple hundred bass fishing tournaments each year, which has him traveling all over the country. He also works on producing a lot of how-to content and features, as FLW’s magazine is one of the leaders in the fishing industry and their website is one of the most heavily trafficked in the fishing industry.

Advising agricultural communication students to “be diverse in what you can do,” Curtis practices what he preaches. His job requires him to be able to write, edit, do on-camera video work, manage a lot of logistics, understand social media, and in general have a wide-ranging skill set.

Over the years Curtis has done freelance writing for Outdoor Life, Pheasants Forever, Ducks Unlimited, and other publications. He also self-published/co-authored a book called Walleye Trolling with Captain Ross Robertson from Toledo, Ohio. They started shipping books in 2013 and have since sold out. The book is filled with how-to-catch tips, techniques, and other information regarding walleye.

Outside of work, Curtis enjoys spending time outdoors. This summer Curtis and wife Andrea bought a house on 18 acres where Curtis says he is “currently figuring out what kind of trees I have.” He is very interested in learning new ways to use the land- from gardening to foraging nuts and fruit to sawing lumber to conserving wildlife habitat. With natural springs and rolling hills, Curtis says their new home and land has more potential than he has time.

Although Curtis’ job takes him all over the country, he enjoys time at home with his wife and daughter Rainey Grace, as well as bird hunting with his Vizsla dog Alberdeen, and fishing.

“Enjoy what you do, otherwise you’ll hate everyday.”

-Curtis Niedermier

Dan Toland, a 2005 agricultural communication graduate, took the agricultural world by storm as he introduced and implemented the use of social media to promote and enhance agriculture.

Now a Delta Theta Sigma Fraternity alum, Dan spent time in college honing his communication skills as the editor of the AgriNaturalist and as an intern as a correspondent for Farm World newspaper.

Dan and wife Stephanie cheering on the Buckeyes

After working at a sportswear company in Wooster, OH in the role of sales, service, and graphic design following graduation, Dan landed a job at Ohio Farm Bureau Federation in 2007. At OFBF Dan was the website editor while also writing for the Buckeye Farm News and Our Ohio publications.

At the time when social media was emerging as a big driving force in the communication world, Dan was assigned the role of taking it on at OFBF. Making head-turning moves, Dan created a social media platform for OFBF that caught the attention of organizations across the country. The impact and presence that OFBF had in the digital world due to Dan’s adept attention to their social media was groundbreaking for an agricultural organization to do.

Realizing that having farmers tell their own stories was the most effective way to get a message across, Dan posted a guide for farmers to use social media for “agvocacy” on Ohio Farm Bureau’s website. This “guide” bolstered Dan’s expertise and he soon found himself traveling all over Ohio conducting training for farmers and agribusiness professionals to use social media as an effective form of their communication and agricultural advocacy.

Calls from various publications and other organizations around the country started pouring in, all asking Dan the same question- “How was agriculture applying social media?” Dan became a featured speaker, presenter, and trainer at conferences both national and international. He was invited to speak not only on behalf of the agricultural industry, but oftentimes solely because of his grasp on social media as a whole. These successes helped him transition into the role of director of digital strategy for Ohio Farm Bureau, at the same time becoming involved with the AgChat Foundation.

Today, Dan’s professional career has led him to a position as an account manager for Wilt Public Relations, which is a small startup, full-scale public relations, marketing, and communications firm based in Springfield, Ohio. Specializing in biosciences, the company helps clients in the agriculture, energy and environment, and health and wellness sectors with any and all of their communication needs.

Dan is thankful for a very progressive, trusting and flexible boss, who allows him to have a very good work-life balance. Dan works out of my home office in Findlay, Ohio, 60-75 percent of the time, while also making regular trips to the Springfield office as well as client visits and such.

“In addition to account management, you could also say that I’m the office technology nerd. I am a big proponent of taking advantage of today’s technology to enhance work and collaboration, allowing our workforce to work where they want, how they want and always be connected and have everything a their fingertips to get their job done,” says Dan.

For future or current students, Dan says that the opportunities in agriculture are there for the taking. While internships are key in gaining experience, he stressesthe importance of staying humble and applying an attitude of continual learning and improvement.

He advises to view social networks as living, breathing resumes for prospective employers, so it is a smart idea to take a solid inventory and evaluation of how you represent yourself online.

Dan loves spending time with his family, including wife Stephanie, 7-year-old daughter Lily, and 1-year-old son Oliver. A Cleveland sports fanatic, Dan admits the Cleveland Browns have shortened his lifespan, but his loyalty is unyielding, and this loyalty for Cleveland is shown as Dan admitted, “I cried for three days after the Cavs FINALLY brought a championship to Cleveland.” With the Cleveland Indians in the World Series, you can bet that family time in the Toland household is consisting of a lot of baseball-watching.

Lily Toland

Dan with son Oliver