#WomenInAg: Meet Molly Ball, President and CMO of the National FFA Foundation

When Molly Ball decided to join her high school’s FFA chapter, she had no idea it would snowball into a fulfilling career. Molly, who grew up on a small corn and soybean farm in Vicksburg, Michigan, credits her early involvement with the high school chapter for helping her develop strong self-confidence and public speaking skills – both of which helped her land a desirable FFA internship in the newsroom at the National FFA Convention in 1997 after completing a dual degree in agriculture and natural resources communications at Michigan State University.

 

That job was the kickoff to Molly’s career trajectory, which includes managing major fundraising campaigns in higher education for two Michigan colleges, before circling back to where it all began. In 2013, Ball accepted the role as president and chief marketing officer of the National FFA Foundation, making it the first time a female has taken on this position within the organization. Since then, Ball’s leadership has propelled the organization forward – both in membership numbers and fundraising dollars.

 

We recently spoke with Molly about her current role with FFA, the role confidence plays in any position and the need to redefine agriculture for future generations.

 

Geswein Farm & Land (GFL) : Was it a natural transition for you to take on your current role as President and Chief Marketing Officer of the National FFA Foundation?

Molly Ball (MB): I always tell young people that your life will take twists and turns. Your road is never completely straight. I worked for FFA out of college when we moved to Indiana in 1998, and I had the honor to work in a communications department where I helped with moving the annual convention to Indianapolis, but I missed being in Michigan so I got a great job with the Michigan Farm Bureau as a regional representative and Southeastern Michigan before trading agriculture for higher ed. I served as development director at Kalamazoo College before taking on another role as vice president for development and college relations at Monmouth College.

Then, one day, I took a phone call about this position opening up, and I got the gig. Fast-forward 10+ years and here I’m still sitting.

 

GFL: You were the first female in the role. What was that like?

MB: You know, things like that don’t bother me. I don’t want to be Susan B Anthony. It never fazed me being a woman in agriculture. I’ve never thought twice about it. Probably because of how my farm bureau job shaped me – I had to have the confidence to walk onto someone’s field, introduce myself and talk to them about the farm bureau and why being a farm bureau member was important. I had to be confident. I’ve got to either buck up or, you know, I got to take a backseat, and I chose the first part.

 

GFL: What do you do in your current role?

MB: I’m the president of the foundation and chief marketing officer of the organization so I manage all the fundraising. We raise a little over 20 million a year. I’m part of the CEO’s cabinet. We call it the executive leadership team. I’m part of every big decision National FFA makes – from employee morale to bigger decisions when it comes to membership. As chief marketing officer, I oversee all of the PR/marketing with my team and an external team that works with us, too. It’s a lot of fun.

 

GFL: It sounds like you wear a lot of hats in your role. What’s your day-to-day like?

MB: My day-to-day is filled with a variety of things – everything from meeting with my staff to formulating strategy with our executive leadership team, fundraising, working with our sponsors and with our board, who are executives in the agricultural industry. I also manage the alumni team, which means that I get the privilege of working to really think and strategize about how to engage alumni.

 

GFL: What would you say is the most exciting or interesting thing about your job?

MB: The annual convention. It’s exhausting, but it kind of fills up my bucket every year. It gives me sort of a renewed sense of hope. I also realize how hard our ag teachers work – they work so tirelessly and so hard and they’re just amazing people who get excited for the future of ag.

One of the best parts…I got to welcome in six new national officers this morning and we’re going to dinner with them tonight. I get to be involved with these six young people. It’s really fun to see where they come in at and where they leave, and what we’ve done with them in between.

 

GFL: What’s one of the bigger challenges that you face?

MB: One of the biggest challenges is figuring out how to engage all of our members. What does that look like? What does National FFA do to support our states? Because our state FFAs don’t always have full-time staff and many rely on us to help them.

 

GFL: What are your plans for the future?

MB: I plan to be in this role as long as they want me. We’re walking into our 100th anniversary in a couple years. My hope is that we launch a 100th anniversary capital campaign to raise more money so we can have really cool events around the 100th anniversary and have a convention that knocks it out of the park in 2027.

 

GFL: What advice would you give someone who may also want to pursue a career in agriculture?

MB: As far as agriculture goes, I think it’s the same advice I gave my son. Just because you say agriculture doesn’t mean you’re going to be a farmer. My son has grown up in a very suburban city and they have a 5,000-student population in their high school. He wants to go to Purdue and one of the ways he can get in is through agriculture economics.

Agriculture isn’t just about farming. And I think we have this huge challenge to tell our story better because there’s two things that are going to be extremely important to us in the future: food and infrastructure, and both of those go hand in hand. How do we feed 9 billion people in 2050? It’s going to be a challenge for sure. And that’s why we need the next generation to understand how they fit into the ag industry.

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