YORK — The Executive Director of the Nebraska LEAD Program stopped in York on Monday to speak with the News-Times about recruiting people for the program’s next class and discuss his retirement in June.
Terry Hejny has run the Nebraska LEAD Program, a leadership training program for Nebraskans involved in agriculture, for 17 years. Hejny got his start in education as an agriculture teacher in Geneva before eventually teaching at Nebraska Extension. It was while at the university that he participated in the LEAD Program.
“It’s a life-changing program,” said Hejny, who went on to serve as director after participating in the program.
Each year about 30 individuals between ages 25 and 55 are selected for the program, which includes twelve three-day seminars on ag-related topics. In the first year participants go on a ten-day trip to Kansas City, Washington D.C. and Chicago to meet with a variety of leaders in agriculture. Then, in the second year participants travel internationally. In 2024 group traveled to Albania, Greece and Italy.
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The Nebraska Agricultural Leadership Council founded LEAD, which stands for Leadership Education/Action Development, as a nonpartisan and nonpolitical organization that promotes agricultural leadership in 1981.
The program has continued to live up to that mission, said Kerry Hoffschneider, who is from a farm in York County and participated in the program in the early 2000s, before Hejny became director.
Hoffschneider said the LEAD program gave her “the confidence to explore agriculture in different ways.” As proof, she pointed to the ag consultancy organization she now runs, Graze Masters Group, which aims to improve agricultural practices and natural resources while keeping agriculture profitable. She also said the program influenced her to decision to start an ag podcast, Underdog Ag, which she said gets into “tough topics.”
Traveling to Mexico City, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Panama showed Hoffschneider that her “backyard is really big” and that it is important to “connect with people” who are affected “by the decisions that agriculture makes,” but who aren’t always visible. She also said the program exposed her to “inequities in agriculture.”
“Farmers and ranchers have far more in common than they have different,” she said. “Soil, water and our natural resources connect us as human beings.” Her class included ranchers, dry land farmers, and a variety of Nebraskans in the ag business, Hoffschneider said.
Another York-area participant, Zach Suddarth, also noted how much he learned about Nebraska’s agriculture business in the LEAD program. “You make a lot of new friends from all different parts of agriculture across the state,” Suddarth said, adding that he continues to work with graduates of the program in his job.
He recalled meeting Nebraska’s U.S. Senators in Washington D.C., touring a John Deere Plant in Chicago and traveling to South Korea, China and Hong Kong.
As a vice president and farm supervisor at Cornerstone Bank in York, Suddarth said he believes strongly in the program’s mission: “we need to keep developing leadership in agricultural organizations because it’s just that important to us as a state.” Alumni of the program include U.S. Sen. Deb Fischer and former State Senator Curt Friesen, who was from Henderson.
Hejny said he is looking forward to his retirement, but he is happy to have “gotten to work with the best people” as director. And like LEAD alumni before him, he added that he was considering some future work in public service.