Land O' Lakes is hiring a Governance Manager for their corporate location in Arden Hills, Minnesota. This position requires skills to build and maintain intimate relationships with regional council members to assist them in developing their competencies to fulfill their roles in Land O'Lakes corporate governance; actively coach and teach elected leaders to recruit potential future leaders representing diversity of thought, generation, gender, race, etc., and master interview skills to critically review BOD applicants. Design and teach curriculum to improve the competency of elected leaders; develop partnerships internally (Ag Customer Team, Business Development Services, Member Relations, Purina and Winfield) to assist in recruitment of potential elected leaders and externally with university faculty, cooperative centers, trade associations to identify learning modules and presenters to teach competencies.

Qualifications

• Ensure Integrity of EL and BOD Nomination Processes and Member Voting
• Ensure transparency, accuracy and integrity of elected leader and BOD applicant recruitment, elected leader and BOD applicant vetting process and BOD applicant interview process with regional councils
• Ensure credentials verified, ballots prepared, quorum present and reported for in-person voting at Land O'Lakes business meetings
• Ensure accuracy of member eligibility to serve as an elected leader with Land O'Lakes governance
• Oversee negotiation and administration of 3rd party contractor to execute annual election process
• Design and execute strategic governance plan and budget for governance activities Lead Continuous Improvement of Elected Leader Competency Training
• Design and deliver learning modules that build critical competencies of elected leaders; actively coach elected leaders to recruit applicants representing diversity of thought, generation, gender, race, etc.
• Establish benchmarks for improving elected leader competencies and ways to measure achievement of governance goals Foster Internal and External Relationships
• Deepen relationships with ag cooperative members, dairy members and direct ag members to help identify potential future EL's and BOD's
• Partner with government relations to identify opportunities for elected leaders to develop advocacy and communication skills Partner with Leader Development
• Collaborate with leader development manager to develop learning modules to enhance members' skills to grow pool of future elected leaders for Land O'Lakes and other agricultural
• Assist in identifying members to engage in development opportunities sponsored by Land O'Lakes or other trade associations, universities, businesses, etc.
• Coordinate formal recognition of elected leader service to Land O'Lakes Broaden Engagement of Elected Leaders and Members
• Lead efforts to grow member engagement in governance including contested elections and member participation in annual elections.
• Develop strategy to retain engagement of former elected leaders
• Primary staff lead to twelve regional councils, 150 elected leaders and regional council nomination committees. Oversees the annual elections and secures the contractor to conduct the elected leader and board of director elections

Required experience and education:

• 4-year degree or higher in Business, applied economics, public affairs, political science and/or equivalent
• 5 or more years of experience in corporate governance, cooperative governance or member or customer relations
• Experience recruiting and teaching and training adult volunteers
• Experience evaluating pros and cons of complex, far reaching decisions
• Experience acting strategically in establishing program goals, benchmarks and evaluation of programs
• Experience interacting influencing at a Sr. level

Required competencies:

• Project management skills--ability to develop new systems or processes to ensure integrity and efficiency in administration of governance program
• Awareness of benefits of recruiting members and common obstacles of recruiting members representing diversity of thought, gender, generation, race, etc. to apply to serve as an elected leader or Land O'Lakes board member
• Ability to accomplish results by collaborating with internal and external peers
• Initiates and leads change within governance to ensure continuous improvement--looks for new ways to get things done more efficiently
• Proactively establishes broad network of contacts both internally and externally

Preferred experience and education:

• Advanced degree in applied economics, public affairs, political science, business or equivalent
• Experience with corporate structure of agribusinesses across the food supply chain
• Experience reporting to corporate senior management

Preferred competencies:

• Familiarity with use of CRM's to record interaction with customers or cooperative members
• Knowledge of cooperative or agricultural trade associations and university faculty specializing in cooperatives, agribusiness or supply chain management 

For more information or to apply, click here.