Jamie Miller was appointed Chief Financial Officer of Cargill Inc. on March 16, 2021.
Jamie Miller
Jamie Miller is the first female CFO in Cargill’s history. What does this mean for women leaders in agriculture?
Cargill Inc. the global food conglomerate recently named Jamie Miller as its chief financial officer. For the multinational company it marks a significant first—Miller is the first female CFO in Cargill’s 150 year history. She begins her new role on June 1 at the start of Cargill’s fiscal year, and succeeds David Dines who retires on September 2 after 29 years at Cargill.
The news is also a milestone in that Miller is one of only a handful of women who are executives at global agribusiness companies. Amid publicly traded companies and large privately held companies in the food and farming space women executives in the C suite are scarce. Beth Ford the chief executive of Land O’ Lakes is the exception amid a sector that remains male dominated.
But Miller’s appointment is important in that it could signify a turning point in a growing number of women who hold key positions in agriculture.
“Jamie is a resilient and decisive leader with a learning mind-set, and she is a champion of leveraging data and digitalization to deliver business results,” said Cargill’s Chief Executive David MacLennan said in a statement. “I’m confident she has the expertise and leadership approach to continue driving our organization forward as our CFO.”
Miller joins a growing number of female C level executives at international companies in a variety of sectors including Carol Tomé of UPS, Karen Lynch of CVS, Mary Barra of GM, Rosalind Brewer of Walgreens and Jane Fraser of Citicorp.
Who is Jamie Miller?
Although Miller has no reported background in food and farming, she is no stranger to running the finances of major businesses. After graduating with an accounting degree from Miami University in Oxford, Ohio in 1990, she joined Genworth Financial Inc. as the Vice President, Corporate Controller and Chief Accounting Officer. She was a partner at accounting giant PricewatehouseCoopers from 2005 to 2007 before serving as Controller of Anthem, Inc. for a year.
The core of her career has been at GE where she started out as a Vice President, Controller and Chief Accounting Officer in 2008 to being name to CFO and senior vice president in 2017. Amid the various leadership roles she’d held at GE, she oversaw GE’s core Digital Technology function and held operational responsibility for GE Capital and served as President and CEO of GE Transportation.
She currently sits on the board of Girls Who Code a national non-profit that tackles gender gap in technology. In 2020 Qualcomm appointed Miller to the board where she sits on the audit committee.
Outside of the C suite, the agriculture sector continues to wrestle with gender inequity although that is slowly shifting. The number of female farmers went from 31.5% as recorded in 2012 to 36% in 2017, according to the 2017 Census of Agriculture. Gender inequity remains rampant in other corners of the sector. According to a report by AgFunder a venture capital firm, 100% of founders of the 10 largest agrifoodtech financings in 2020 were men and of the top 20 financings two were known to have women co-founders.
