Tiffany Atwell

Tiffany Atwell, as leader of global government and industry affairs at one of the largest stand-alone agriculture organizations in the world, has the critical job of ensuring that the U.S. agricultural sector has access to international markets. To that end, she has long been a strong supporter of free trade. 

Atwell began her career through the competitive Presidential Management Fellows Program at the State Department, where she began the globally minded work that has defined her career. Between 2004 and 2006, she brought that international perspective to the Hill. Atwell worked closely with Sen. Chuck Grassley, a farmer who is among the agriculture industry’s biggest champions in Congress. As an international-trade-policy adviser on the Senate Finance Committee, she wrote speeches and briefings for the Iowa Republican. During that period, Grassley sponsored five free-trade-implementation acts that became law, including agreements with Australia, the Dominican Republic and Central America, Morocco, Bahrain, and Oman. 

Following her tenure in the Senate, Atwell took a position with Abbott Laboratories, leading outreach to foreign governments. There, she drove the company’s engagement in major markets, including Russia, China, and India, and built partnerships with nongovernmental organizations. 

Since 2013, Atwell has directed DuPont’s market access policy efforts, continuing her work in key markets by promoting the company abroad. She joined Corteva, a spinoff of DowDupont, last year. At the international seed- and crop-protection company, she has helped establish partnerships with farmers in emerging markets. At this year’s Africa Green Revolution Forum virtual summit, for instance, she launched a Corteva partnership to increase dairy production in Kenya, where she once worked at the U.S. embassy. She also helped develop a partnership with the Indian government to assist more than 100,000 farmers. 

At DuPont, Atwell continued her work on American trade interests in China, representing the company at the 2015 U.S.-China Business Council membership meeting. In 2018, she spoke at a discussion on U.S.-Brazil relations hosted by the Brazil-U.S. Business Council and the Brazilian Embassy. And closer to home, Atwell has expressed strong support for the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement; Corteva lobbied vigorously for its passage.

Atwell has often encouraged other women and members of underrepresented groups to join the agricultural sector. Speaking at a 2017 conference in Canada, she said that women “have fresh ideas, new approaches, understand how to listen, and that is what agriculture needs.”