New Program Manager at HMI

HMI is excited to announce our new Program Manager, Kathy Harris. Kathy comes to HMI from Texas, where she has been involved with the Beginning Women Farmer Program as a mentor and Certified Educator trainee for the past few years. She is passionate about learning and has seen first-hand the difference Holistic Management can make in people’s lives, so she is very excited about the opportunity to make a greater impact by being a part of the HMI staff. Having grown up mostly in different cities across Texas, Kathy’s main connection with farming and ranching was time spent on her grandmother’s ranch in west Texas, and a lot of time picking beans and okra in the home backyard garden. After education and a first career in technical communication and education, she took a break from the business world to start a family. Then, a series of family injury and losses spurred a more intense interest in health and nutrition. Concurrent with her introduction to Holistic Management in the late 1990s, Kathy became involved with the Weston A. Price Foundation (WAPF), a non-profit organization dedicated to education about traditional foods and nutrition, and she started the first local chapter in Texas. With the guidance of a personal holistic goal and new knowledge about traditional foods, she transitioned her family from the suburbs to a small homestead, and was soon raising dairy, eggs, poultry, beef, vegetables, and fruits to support the health and education of family and friends. Through involvement with Holistic Management in Texas and the WAPF for the past 15 years, she has worked to support small farmers by connecting them with consumers interested in sustainable, grass-based farming and nutrient dense foods. After successfully completing the schooling of her two daughters, she left her homestead just outside McKinney to manage the start-up of a 250-acre grass-based ranch in North Central Texas. There, she developed the infrastructure for intensive, multi-species grazing of beef cattle, hair sheep, pastured layers and broilers, a small herd of dairy goats and cows, and a native pecan orchard. With that task completed, HMI tapped Kathy to become the new program manager we needed to provide increased capacity here at HMI headquarters as we continue to grow our programming. Welcome, Kathy!