Service Work ‘Fills My Cup’
Her time in FFA didn’t define past national president Jackie Mundt, but it did equip her for success in her vocation and in service.
“Through FFA, I had experiences most people never have in their lives, let alone at the age I was having them,” Mundt says. “I traveled to interesting places, saw what happens behind the scenes at big corporations, sat in a boardroom with powerful people, spoke in front of large audiences and presented workshops to high school students. There are little pieces of all those different things every day in my life now. FFA built the foundation that allowed me to go on to succeed.”
Early Introduction to All FFA Has to Offer
Growing up on a dairy farm in Wisconsin, Mundt was introduced to FFA through her older siblings. “My older sister served as a state officer when I was in junior high,” Mundt recalls. “I went to convention the year she was elected to state office, and that’s a core memory for me. I fell in love with the opportunity to travel to events and meet FFA members from across the country, and to go to state and national conventions to compete in speaking contests and development events. FFA was the fun place to be.”
After her year of service as national president in 2004-05, Mundt earned a bachelor’s degree in agriculture communications from California State University, Fresno. She moved to Kansas in 2010 to take a sales position with Dow AgroSciences. Today, she is the director of communications for Kanza Cooperative Association, where she develops communications strategies across 25 communities in five Kansas counties. She also grows corn, soybeans, wheat and sorghum along with raising cow-calf pairs on her partner’s family farm near Preston, Kansas. “It’s the best of both worlds,” Mundt says. “I’m living a farm life, but also utilizing what I would say is a God-given talent as a communicator.”
Investing Time and Energy for Ag
Mundt says FFA introduced her to the power of effective communication and to advocacy work. “Neither of these were things I even knew existed in high school,” she says. “FFA also introduced me to the people who would be influential in teaching me the skills and opening the doors for me to take this path. I’m a firm believer that most high school and younger students don’t really have an understanding of what jobs even exist, let alone what is the job that someday will be the place they are meant to be.”
She’s now the person teaching those skills to young people through her service, ranging from being a 4-H leader to serving on ag advisory committees at the local community college and at area high schools. Her advocacy for agriculture extends from the local level to statewide service, as she’s served as president and board member of the Pratt County Farm Bureau and now sits on the board for the Kansas Farm Bureau Foundation for Agriculture and on the Kansas FFA Foundation Board of Trustees, along with multiple other community and civic organizations.
“Service work is what fills my cup,” Mundt says. “I’m brought great joy in life when I see the people I’m working with be successful or the students I work with go on to do great things. You can do so much more by investing your time in the world around you than you can do on your own.”
That investment focuses on advocating for agriculture and helping rural communities thrive. “If we don’t engage with the general public and help them understand that we in ag are doing our best for consumers, for the product itself, and for our families to keep our farms running, then it will continue to become harder and harder to farm and we’ll see less people able to make it in agriculture,” Mundt says. “That’s why I spend time serving my community, talking about agriculture, working with young people and trying to develop leaders, because we need a strong agriculture industry. That only happens if our farmers, our FFA members and young people who are involved in it are equipped to go out and tell that message.”
