A leader with Viterra is encouraging women to be brave and take that next step to achieve professional success in their careers.

Viterra’s Wendy Kaplan says there has been plenty of change in the industry and at her company.

Her company’s workforce is now over 30 per cent women and that number is growing.

“I think the big thing that I have seen (change over the years) is a mentor and a training program that we’ve developed and also a willingness of our senior staff and the senior managers in our company to continue to work to develop training programs, said Kaplan.  “The women were willing to jump at the chance to take these opportunities and get involved in these training programs.”

She says she has seen first hand the strong women who are in the industry.

“I’ve learned that we have some very strong powerful women that have a lot of skills, but each of them have unique needs so we need to find ways to make the opportunities available to them so they can participate in this exciting industry too.”

Kaplan says it’s important women are brave and push forward to achieve what they want in their professional careers.

“If you feel like you are not knowledgeable enough yet on the content, find a mentor take that next step push yourself to the edges, possibly even to edges of discomfort and that’s how you are going to grow and succeed by this business is taking those chances.”

Wendy Kaplan was one of the speakers at the 2017 Advancing Women in Agriculture Conference – West.

To see all the speakers and to register for the 2018 West Conference click here.