My farm-writing colleague Janet Kanters, communications manager at the Beef Information Centre in Alberta, is one of the featured speakers at the second annual Alberta Women in Agriculture dinner and silent auction. Janet is the heart and soul of the Alberta Farm Writers Association — which is sponsoring this year's annual meeting of the Canadian Farm Writers Federation in Edmonton — and recently accepted a new role in the International Federation of Agricultural Journalists, as chair of the communications committee. I found out about Janet's speaking engagement by reading Ropin' The Web, a superb weekly electronic newsletter from Alberta Agriculture and Rural Development, run by two other top-notch women in agricultural communications, Tracey Feist and Lisa Guenther.
OWEN ROBERTS
Owen Roberts is a faculty member in the Agricultural Leadership, Education and Communications program at the University of Illinois. As an agricultural journalist, he is the past president of the International Federation of Agricultural Journalists and a lifetime achievement award recipient from the Canadian Farm Writers' Federation. His programs and research papers have been recognized nationally and internationally through awards from the Journal of Applied Communications, the National Agri-Marketing Association, the Association for Communications Excellence, and others.