Meet Andrea Miller, growing in consulting

Agriculture has always been an innovative industry, and digital innovation in ag is much more exciting than most people realize. Within Kin + Carta’s ag client portfolio, we have some of the most interesting projects at the company — including yield prediction, drones, and e-Commerce.  Not only have I loved working with these projects, teams across the firm do, too. I think it’s because there are really exciting projects across the industry of agriculture, and they’re solving real-world challenges. 

One of my favorite parts of each month is conducting our “Farming 1-0-Fun” course for all new joiners to our ag accounts. It’s an hour-long class where we give people a schema for agriculture — seasons of the year, machinery, crop types, and important data points. We have some further recorded trainings, including one featuring my dad talking about his farm. We also try to get people out into the field as often as possible. I find that all of this work holistically helps our teams better empathize with our customers, allowing us to continue building the best software products possible.

In 2018, after four years of working across different functional consulting roles and for different clients, I heard about an opportunity to laterally move into Kin + Carta’s Demand organization. I initially wasn't sure if it was the right fit, but I came to realize that some of my strengths as a consultant — building client relationships and understanding my clients’ business challenges — would be key strengths in this new role. 

I stepped into the position, initially focusing on generating new business, but it evolved first into a Client Lead role that spans client delivery and sales, and now into a role that focuses on the growth of our clients in the agriculture space. I’m responsible for finding new ways to partner with our clients and to ensure our teams are successful. 

When I started, I was the only woman carrying a quota at Kin + Carta. Prior to joining Demand, I didn’t often think about my gender and how it affected my work. I was now often the only woman in the room. I talked about this a lot with our Demand leadership team and emphasized why having diverse teams is so crucial to our success. We discussed ways to evolve our hiring practices to create more diversity of gender across our talent pools. The increased diversity of our team today shows the result of that commitment.

I truly appreciate Kin + Carta’s commitment to Inclusion, Diversity, Equity and Awareness (IDEA). I attend as many of our educational events as I can, and I encourage others to join me. I truly believe it makes us all better in our respective roles. 

I’ve also found a few ways to talk about it across my clients accounts, by doing things like:

• Creating a new onboarding document where we review inclusion and specific ways to be inclusive on teams. 
• Conducting interviews with team members, giving consultants an opportunity to bring up anything that is making them uncomfortable. 
• Hosting monthly all-hands with our teams and highlighting things like how Asian American and Pacific Islander history relates to agriculture, or sharing the stories of famous Black people who have contributed to agriculture.

I’ve realized that while my trajectory hasn’t been ordinary, it’s actually all been a part of helping me to succeed. I think about all of the jobs I’ve held and see the connection between those and the path I’ve taken throughout my career. For example, I was a shoe salesperson and in that role I learned that I would never sell something I didn’t believe in. I was always honest in telling someone that a shoe just didn’t look good. Or, my job where I was a waitress, a bus girl, and a food runner. Working in the restaurant industry helped me learn how to stay calm amidst chaos. As a camp counselor, I learned that great work can be accomplished while still having a good time together. And working at my family’s asphalt plant embedded in me the value of understanding and appreciating different backgrounds.

All these experiences, among many many others, have armed me with skills and a mindset that has made me, me. They’ve helped me learn my power in creating connections between people and how, together, we can make the world a little bit better.