our presenters
- jim mc cabe
- william j. nelson
- scott miller
- scott novotny
- chuck schwartau
- al roesler
- renee setzer
- michael swanson
- tom thaden
- todd ziegler
sunday, june 10
scott novotny
Scott Novotny was born and grew up in Mayo Clinic, MN (aka Rochester). He attended Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter, MN where he double-majored in Theatre/Speech and English. He taught Junior High English and was Theatre Director at Dassel-Cokato High School for two years, and has been performing stand-up comedy for 25 years.
A versatile performer, Scott headlines comedy clubs throughout the United States, has acted in numerous stage productions, worked at Dudley Rigg’s Brave New Workshop as an improvisational actor/writer, owned and operated The Comedy Cabaret-- MN's first fulltime comedy theatre, and has written for "Saturday Night Live", the comic strip, "Strange Brew", TV commercials, and two children’s plays. His comedy CD “Monu-Mental” was released in 2005. He is married, has two children, and currently resides in New Richmond, WI. He teaches classes in stand-up comedy and improvisation and is currently working on a motivational speech as well as working on teaching a class in Comedy Therapy.
Scott is quickly becoming the most sought-after entertainer for corporate parties, awards banquets and conventions throughout the Midwest. He has the ability to play to a wide range of audience members while keeping the performance professional and appropriate.
One of his favorite gigs has been performing twice so far at Medora, ND at the huge outdoor musical as one of the featured entertainers. What a fun locale-- a huge amphitheatre set right in the middle of the Badlands of ND! www.scottnovotny.com
monday, june 11
dan looker
Dan Looker is the business editor for Successful Farming. He writes about farm policy, business management on the farm, marketing and agribusiness trends, and issues related to beginning farming and farm succession.
Education: Attended the University of Nebraska 4 years, majoring in English, with a history minor. He joined the Peace Corps a few credits short of receiving his degree. He and his wife, Joan, served as volunteers in Colombia, South America.
Journalism credentials:
- College newspaper and part-time reporter for the Lincoln Star
- 1973 – reporter for a weekly in Northfield, Minnesota
- 1974 – 1975 - lifestyle editor for the Omaha Sun Newspapers
- 1976 – writer and editor at the Center for Rural Affairs in Walthill, Nebraska
- 1977 – writer for The New Farm Magazine, the Lincoln Journal Star, and The Des Moines Register
Dan has been the winner of many journalism awards throughout his career. He is also past-president of the North American Agricultural Journalists.
The Lookers have three adult children and one granddaughter. He is an avid outdoor fitness and sports enthusiast.
tina barrett
Tina has been the Director of the Nebraska Farm Business, Inc. since 2002. She grew up on a corn and soybeans farm in central Nebraska and graduated from the University of Nebraska with a degree in Agricultural Economics in 1999. She started with Nebraska Farm Business shortly after graduation as a consultant.
Tina has also been teaching the “Farm Income Tax, Analysis and Accounting” course for the University of Nebraska Lincoln’s Agricultural Economics Department since 2005. She enjoys the opportunity to work with the 40 seniors each fall as they prepare to return to the family farm or support agriculture in many different ways.
Tina is married to Anthony Barrett and they have four girls (ages 5-12) that keep them very busy.
william j. nelson
William J. Nelson is vice president of Corporate Citizenship for CHS Inc. and president of the CHS Foundation.
William provides leadership to all CHS corporate citizenship activities including corporate philanthropy, volunteerism, employee engagement and CHS corporate memberships in associated organizations. William also leads the CHS Foundation, which offers support through university partnerships, rural leadership development, cooperative education, and farm and agricultural safety programs.
William serves on the National Council on Farmer Cooperatives' executive education committee and the board of directors of the National Cooperative Business Association as well as the Minnesota Council on Economic Education. He is a director for the Ralph K. Morris Foundation, a member of the University of Wisconsin Center for Cooperatives Advisory Committee, and a member of the Farm Foundation’s Steering Committee for A Dialogue on Food and Agriculture in the 21st Century. He is a member of the eXtension Foundation Leadership Council, and a founding member and chair of the board of directors of the Agricultural Safety and Health Council of America.
He has undergraduate degrees from the University of Minnesota, Morris, in Sociology and Political Science, and graduate degrees from the University of St. Thomas (Community Education) and the University of Houston (Studies of the Future). He served as a faculty member and administrator in the University of Minnesota for 13 years, prior to joining what is now CHS in 1992. He grew up on a farm in central Minnesota. He is a proud recipient of the Honorary American Farmer Degree.
tom thaden
Tom Thaden, EA, has been a Consultant with the Northwest Iowa Farm Business Association (NWIFBA) since 1979. Tom and his wife Juanita live in Sheldon, Iowa and have three children Josh, Jeremy and Lindsie. For the last 33 years Tom has served 170 NWIFBA Members in Sioux, Lyon, O'Brien, Osceola & Plymouth Counties of Northwest Iowa.
Tom grew up on a Grain and Livestock farm in South Dakota and earned a Bachelor of Science Degree from South Dakota State University in Animal Science (Business Option) in 1974. He has been a member of NAFBAS since 1979, Past President of the Iowa Consultants Association and recently has represented Iowa on the joint NAFBAS & NFRBMEA Board.
chuck schwartau
Chuck Schwartau is a University of Minnesota Extension Educator at the Rochester Regional Extension Office.
For the past 15 years, Chuck has focused on workforce development and management for dairy farms. He has been the member of a team that wrote curricula for agricultural labor managers and has presented at several regional and national conferences on workforce management topics.
Chuck is also a regular contributor to a labor management column for Dairy Today magazine.
renee setzer
Renee was raised on a dairy farm in Shawano County, Wisconsin. She attended UW-River Falls and graduated with a BS in Agriculture.
Her first position out of college was as a loan officer with Farm Credit Services. She became an independent contractor while raising her children to allow for flexibility. Renee held contracts with the Manitowoc and Oconto County service centers of the Farm Service Agency from 1999-2007. She started with Lakeshore Farm Management Association (LFM) in 2007 preparing tax returns and providing analysis and consulting to member/owners.
Renee started attending the National Farm Business Management Conferences in 2008. She is also a member of NATP.
Renee resides in Sheboygan Falls, WI with her husband, Dan. They have four children – Danielle, Dylan, Drew, and Dustin.
tuesday, june 12
tom gillaspy
Tom Gillaspy served as the Minnesota State Demographer for 32 years. During that time, he worked on a wide-ranging set of issues, applying the unique perspective of the demographer to trends in such areas as the economy, pension funds, health care for an aging population, education, school district populations and enrollments, higher education, health; migration and immigration, changing consumers and markets, rural population change, changing workforce and workplace, housing, and financing government.
Prior to moving to Minnesota, Tom held the position of demographer at the Andrus Gerontology Center, University of Southern California. He received his Ph.D. in economics from the Pennsylvania State University, specializing in economic demography. He also holds a Master's Degree in agricultural economics. A native of Texas, he received his undergraduate degree in economics from the University of Texas at Austin.
michael swanson, ph.d.
Michael Swanson is an agricultural economist and consultant for Wells Fargo, the largest commercial agricultural lender in the United States. Based in Minneapolis, his responsibilities include analyzing the impact of energy on agriculture, forecasting for key agricultural commodities, such as wheat, soybeans, corn, and cotton, and livestock sectors, such as cattle, dairy, and hogs. Additionally, he helps develop credit and risk strategies for Wells Fargo’s customers, and performs macroeconomic and international analysis on agricultural production and agribusiness.
Michael joined Wells Fargo in 2000 as a senior economist.
Prior to working at Wells Fargo, he worked for four years at Land O' Lakes, a large national dairy cooperative based in Minnesota. There, he supervised a portion of the supply chain for dairy products including scheduling the production, warehousing, and distribution of more than 400 million pounds of cheese annually and also supervised the sales forecasting process.
Before working in the dairy processing business, Michael lived in South America for four years working for Cargill Cafetera de Manizales S.A., the Colombian subsidiary of the agribusiness giant Cargill. His areas of responsibilities included grain imports and value-added sales to feed producers and flour millers.
Michael started his career as a transportation analyst with Burlington Northern Railway from 1986 until 1989. His primary responsibilities included system analysis and capacity studies in the northern region stretching from Chicago to Seattle.
Michael received undergraduate degrees in economics and business administration from the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, MN, and both his master’s and doctorate degrees in agricultural and applied economics from the University of Minnesota. His doctoral thesis, which the National Research Institute and the Norwegian government sponsored, showed how to use value-added tax data to better estimate key components of economic activity.
charlie arnot
Charlie Arnot is CEO of the Center for Food Integrity and President of CMA, a consulting company with offices in Missouri, Iowa, Indiana and Ohio. The Center for Food Integrity is a non-profit organization dedicated to building consumer trust and confidence in today’s food system with members from the U.S. and Canada.
In his role as president of CMA, Charlie and the CMA team work with companies and associations across the food system in issues management, public relations, strategic facilitation and marketing communications. Charlie is recognized as a thought leader on food and agriculture issues and is a thought provoking writer and speaker.
Charlie spent ten years as vice president of communications and public affairs for Premium Standard Farms; he worked for a public relations agency, was an award winning radio journalist and worked in video and film. Charlie grew up in southeast Nebraska and graduated from the University of Nebraska with a Bachelor of Journalism degree.
robert h. craven
Robert Craven is an Extension Economist and Director of the Center for Farm Financial Management, Department of Applied Economics, University of Minnesota. Areas of specialty include business management, credit analysis and grain marketing. His work for the Center has focused on development of FINPACK, nationally recognized ag credit analysis software. He is also on the development team for the Winning the Game grain marketing education programs. He has been an invited speaker at numerous conferences and seminars including the National ABA Ag Bankers Conference and the USDA Ag Outlook Forum. He has also taught over 350 workshops on farm management and marketing.
Mr. Craven is also actively involved in a 1200 acre family farming operation in southwestern Minnesota. He has a B.S. degree in Animal Science and an M.S. degree in Agricultural Economics from the University of Minnesota. Bob’s e-mail address is: rcraven@umn.edu.
c. robert (rob) holcomb
Rob Holcomb, EA, has been an Extension Educator with the University of Minnesota since 2004. Rob works on the development and delivery of educational programs dealing with agricultural risk management with emphasis on farm analysis, business planning, labor management, and taxation. Rob has been an instructor for the Minnesota Income Tax Short Course since 2010 and in 2011 began serving as the tax school faculty director. Rob and his family reside in Marshall, Minnesota.
wednesday, june 13
thursday, june 14
scott p. miller
Scott P. Miller is the founder and managing attorney of Miller Legal Strategic Planning Centers, P.A. He is a graduate of Cleveland Marshall College of Law and is licensed to practice law in the state of Minnesota. Miller received his B.S.B. from the University of Minnesota, Carlson School of Management. Attorney Miller is a Graduate of the Esperti Peterson Advanced Studies Institute, Teton Institute and Business Enterprises Institute.
Attorney Miller has presented at the Teton Institute and taught many Continued Education Courses for Financial Advisors, Insurance Professionals, Accountants, Farm Business Managers and Nursing Home Social Workers. Miller has been featured in the book Wealth Management Teams and in the Dairy Star, a monthly publication for the Dairy Industry.
Publications by Attorney Miller include the Medical Assistance Reference Manual. Scott Miller is a member of Wealth Counsel, National Academy of Elder Law Attorneys (NAELA), Minnesota State Bar Association Probate and Trust Law Sections, and Hennepin County Medical Assistance Committee.
Metro transplants, Scott and his wife have welcomed the opportunity to raise their two children in a rural environment. The whole family is active in raising Friesian and Gypsy horses.