Kate McDonald Polakiewicz has joined our team as Farm Business Management Specialist and will be offering programming in financial management, production economics, business planning, and market analysis. 

Kate is a production and extension systems specialist with 15 years of experience working in federal government, private sector, academic, and international settings. She comes to CCE from the US Agency for International Development (USAID) where she managed the Farmer-to-Farmer program, a longstanding agricultural extension program that provided short-term technical assistance from US-based farmers to other farmer communities abroad. She also managed large-scale agricultural research awards in horticulture, agronomy, aquaculture, and in scaling new technologies for practical farm use. Before USAID, Kate worked on agriculture programs with farmers while living in Ghana, Ethiopia, and Uganda. Her work in research and extension also brought her to lead education on soil fertility and plant pathology in Honduras, Guatemala, and Mexico. Kate holds a master's degree from the University of California, Davis, and lives with her young family in Amherst, NY. 

Kate is interested to apply her knowledge of agriculture to be of service to producers in Southwest New York production systems. She'll spend her first few months with CCE becoming familiar with local farm operations, meeting and learning from farmers, and building her network. Reach out to say hello at kem348@cornell.edu or 716-640-0522.