Karen Simon of the USA and Klaus Strotmann of Germany have been named judges for this year’s IFAJ-Alltech Young Leaders in Agricultural Journalism awards.
The awards, now in their fifth year, recognize leadership potential in young IFAJ members. Through sponsorship from Alltech, IFAJ is able to give 10 awards valued at 1,000 Euros each, to support the winners’ participation at an IFAJ congress.
Karen Simon
VDAJ Klaus Strotmann
The young leaders’ award also helps IFAJ grow, and to contribute positively to the global advancement of agricultural journalism and communications.
“IFAJ is fortunate these two enthusiastic and talented individuals accepted our invitation to judge this year’s competition,” said Owen Roberts, IFAJ secretary general and awards coordinator. “Their professional backgrounds and experiences will help ensure this remains a topnotch competition.”
Karen Simon is director of communications for the Iowa Soybean Association. She joined the association five years ago after working as a journalist for more than 20 years. In a related role, she currently serves as past-president of the American Agricultural Editors’ Association, an organization that serves agricultural media, communicators and industry partners from across the United States and chairs that organization’s ethics committee. She has earned bachelor and master’s degrees from the College of St. Catherine in St. Paul, MN. Born and raised in Minnesota, some of her earliest and most pleasant memories are of her experiences while visiting her grandparents’ farms.
Klaus Strotmann is the editor in charge for crop production at dlz agrarmagazin. This monthly business magazine is circulated throughout German-speaking Europe with 100,000 readers. He is a past winner of the IFAJ-Alltech Young Leaders Award (2009), and participated at the IFAJ congress in Ft. Worth, Texas. Klaus was born in Hannover, and spent holidays on a grassland farm in southern Germany, experiencing how a small manually run dairy farm developed into a modern state-of-the-art mechanized company. In 2006 he started a two-year traineeship at the dlv Deutscher Landwirtschaftsverlag publishing house. The company publishes over 20 agricultural magazines. Simultaneously, he started volunteering with the Bavarian branch of the German guild for agricultural journalists VDAJ. Today, he is vice-chairman of the Bavarian VDAJ.
Award entries are being received now until the deadline, Friday, April 15, 2011.
See www.www.ifaj.org/contests-and-awards/young-leaders-award.html for more details.
