Thank you to all that voted in this year's election! The following members were elected to the Cereals & Grains Association Board of Directors. Officer installation will take place at the Cereals & Grains 22 Meeting in Minnesota.
President-Elect
Jennifer Robinson graduated from the University of Northern Iowa with degrees in Chemistry and Earth Science. Following graduation in 1993, I joined Cargill North American Sweeteners in Eddyville, IA as a QA Technician. I held QA Manager roles at Cargill facilities in Wahpeton, ND and Memphis, TN before transferring to Horizon Milling, Cargill’s flour milling division in 2007, as Regional Product Integrity Manager. In 2011, I joined Bay State Milling Company as V.P. Corporate Quality Assurance responsible for quality, food safety, and regulatory compliance.
I am a member of the Executive Leadership Team at Bay State Milling Company, recently assuming responsibility as Executive Sponsor for Personal Safety in addition to my current responsibilities. Having previously obtained my Six Sigma Yellow Belt and Green Belt, I am currently pursuing my Six Sigma Black Belt through Florida Atlantic University, completing a project focused on building a Model Safety Organization. Passionate about technology to advance consistency in quality measurements, I collaborated with others at Bay State Milling Company and Perten Instruments on patent Measuring Properties of Flour, Dough, and other Solids filed March 28, 2019 (No. 16/368,017).
Director-at-Large
Nicole Rees started baking at age 8, and by the age of 11 was modifying recipes from the Joy of Cooking to suit her own tastes and/or overcome lack of proper ingredients. It did not occur to her that her career would be in baking. Not even when she catered her own lectures and programs as the Coordinator of Education for the Oberlin Museum of Art, nor when she was asked to recreate quaresimale biscotti from Brooklyn out of her house in New Jersey. Eventually, she went into food publishing as an editor, writer, and recipe developer. Nicole was a test kitchen director for a weekly women’s magazine, and then left to write two books on baking for beginning pasty chefs.
Nicole started her work in industrial baking when she answered an ad placed by AB Mauri looking for a “research baker.” She had read Pyler’s books on Baking Technology (this is before Laurie Gorton’s editions) and was thrilled to be working with a PhD cereal chemist, Bernie Bruinsma (Cereals & Grains Association president 2008) who introduced her to the Association in 2003, and she's been involved within the Association ever since.
