Talent Leadership: Food and Ag

Executive recruiter and founder of Curtis Food Recruiters, Julie Curtis ’96 headlined the annual Richard Schmitz Food Entrepreneurship lecture series.

The 2022 Richard Schmitz Food Entrepreneurship lecture series once again welcomed students, faculty, staff and the community to Ostrander Auditorium for a deep dive into the multifaceted world of food and agribusiness. This year’s topic centered on talent acquisition and diversifying the food and agriculture industry. Julie Curtis, who has worked in the food retail industry her entire career, was on hand to share how she took the entrepreneurial leap in 2006, starting her own food-specific recruiting firm, Curtis Food Recruiters.

Curtis and Director of the AgriBusiness & Food Innovation Program, Shane Bowyer, sat down for a fireside chat. The following has been edited for length and clarity. To view the entire event, visit cob.mnsu.edu/foodlecture2022.

SB: What was it like taking the risk leaving the corporate world?

JC: When I think back about it, I think I was probably overly confident. I didn’t have a real sense that this wasn’t going to work. That was part of my naivete. I’d still planned, and I saved and spent about a year thinking about that before actually taking the leap, but a big reason that I wanted to do that was to have a little bit more control and a little bit more balance.

SB: Can you elaborate on the challenges of starting a business?

JC: There are a couple things that no one tells you, and I think one of them is that you have to be all things when you start a business. You’re the only one. In my case I was the recruiter, I was the salesperson, I was the accountant, I was the marketing person, the PR person. You have to do everything and in many cases you’re not an expert. You’re an expert in the thing that you started out to do, and then little by little you are able to hire others that are experts in those fields. But the sales component and being the face of your brand never goes away. You’re always selling whatever that business is that you’ve started. SB: What are the qualities food and ag companies are looking for in new hires?

JC: Communication skills are key; having eye contact and being able to convey your ideas is critical. [When it comes to interviewing]: doing your research, understanding the business, understanding your role and understanding what that business does and bringing your energy and passion whether that’s a first conversation, an interview and into that first role.

SB: How can [students] prepare themselves to move up from those entry level jobs to being a leader within their industry or company?

JC: I think patience is one of the keys; having enough time in each of those roles to learn what your contribution is to that particular business, really understanding the needs of that business and preparing yourself. Career development is also key at all levels and especially in smaller organizations you’re going to need to ask for it, it isn’t something that they just have a plan for.

SB: You’re a women-owned business, and you have a number of women who work for you. Talk about that in terms of the food and ag industry.

JC: I feel very privileged in my life and my career to have not felt a lot of the ramifications of the gender divide within the food industry. That said, when people graduate from college it’s usually about a 50/50 split within the food industry (ag definitely leans toward men going into that industry), but what’s really interesting is that as we grow in our career as you go into a manager level position, that number instead of being 50 is closer to 35, and then it continues to go down as the levels go up. So as a senior vice president, executive vice president, chief executive officer and other C-level roles it’s only about 20 percent women in those roles and that’s something that we think about a lot in our firm. Recruiting people that are going to bring diverse thoughts into the business that are going to bring in new ideas and creative ideas is extremely important.

Meet the Leader

Julie Curtis is owner and President of Curtis Food Recruiters. She is a food and beverage industry professional with over 20 years of executive recruitment experience, as well as a Minnesota State University, Mankato marketing alumna. In 2006, she started her own company, Curtis Food Recruiters, and has recruited top level talent ever since. Her company was listed on Forbes’ America’s Best Executive Recruiting Firms and MSPBJ’s Twin Cities Largest Executive Search Firms in 2021.

About the Endowment

The Richard R. and Mary L. Schmitz Endowment for Opportunities in Food Entrepreneurship was founded in 1999. The fund supports an annual lecture by industry experts in the category of food entrepreneurship. This includes executives within a broad range of food processing, retailing and wholesaling industries. This series provides an opportunity for Minnesota State University, Mankato’s College of Business to engage the growing sector of AgriBusiness with our students, alumni and friends in a format that educates the community about growing needs in the agriculture world.