Employee Spotlight: A Winding Path Leads Home to Simplot and SmartFarm

For Simplot Grower Solutions Digital Sales Supervisor Amanda Kerbs, agriculture isn’t just a profession, it’s a way of life. As part of the digital sales enablement team for Simplot’s Great Plains region, Kerbs leverages her varied expertise and non-traditional career path to benefit her customers, her Simplot colleagues, her community, and, ultimately, a growing world.

Kerbs grew up on her family’s farm, Box Elder Ranch, in Wray, Colorado, about 7 miles from both the Nebraska and Kansas state lines. They farmed corn, dry beans, alfalfa, wheat … “pretty much the full bag of crops,” as Kerbs put it. They also had a small feed lot and custom cattle feeding operation.

Despite her upbringing doing all the stuff most farm kids do, like caring for livestock and helping with planting and harvest, she wasn't really that interested in ag. So, for college she chose a different path, straight to the Colorado School of Mines. There, she earned both a Bachelor’s and a Master’s in geological engineering.

But she hadn’t completely left ag behind. The summer after starting college, Kerbs was looking for an internship where she could live at home while she worked. “Simplot actually had a precision ag internship in Wray at that time,” she recalled. “So having the geospatial data skills I accumulated over my time at school, I was able to come and intern with Simplot that summer.”

After finishing college and grad school, Kerbs took her expertise and skills to a private consulting company. There she worked on civil infrastructure design for large-scale projects like dams and mining operations. It was interesting and important work, but eventually a different – but familiar – path called.

In her late 20s, Kerbs found herself ready for a change of pace and wanting to reconnect to her ag background. Her interest in relocating to a small town led her back to Simplot. “Knowing that corporate culture, and the local culture, was really what made it a good fit for me. And I knew I had the skills to add value at the location,” she said. “At that time, the SmartFarm platform was building out a little bit and shifting some people around and it opened up an opportunity for me to come back and be in Wray.” Which is where she now lives and works. Again.
 

It’s perhaps unsurprising that Kerbs says engineering data analysis is one of her favorite parts of the job and that she enjoys bringing those skills to the SmartFarm table. And she points out, “I think it's really important to remember that we, the SmartFarm team, are very good at leaning on each other and leaning into different skill sets.

“I think when you bring it all together, it just makes so much bigger of an impact.”

Asked how she’d describe Simplot in one word, it’s tough to narrow down the choices. “There are so many words that you could use to describe this Company. Open-minded, diverse. Forward thinking”.

As for Kerbs’ family farm? She says it’s still around and thriving… and is a longtime SmartFarm customer. “My family's farm was a SmartFarm customer before I ever started at Simplot!”

Learn more about Simplot SmartFarm.