A funeral service for Rep. Louise Slaughter will be held Friday in Kodak Hall at Eastman Theater in Rochester, N.Y. Slaughter, who died March 16 following a fall at her home, was 88 and had represented the Rochester area in the House of Representatives since 1987. She was the oldest sitting member of Congress. A microbiologist and the first and only woman to head the powerful Rules Committee (2007-2011), the Democrat fought unsuccessfully in recent years to restrict the use of antibiotics in healthy cattle, which she said was a major factor in the rise of drug-resistant bacteria. While her legislation never passed, she kept a spotlight focused on the issue, and President Obama in 2015 announced a five-year plan to identify emerging “superbugs” and to fund research for new antibiotics and vaccines … Massachusetts Democrat Jim McGovern will succeed Slaughter in an acting capacity as the Rules panel ranking member and looks to be her permanent successor. Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi will eventually make that decision. The full Democratic Caucus must ratify the pick, but that’s generally a formality.
House Ways and Means Chairman Kevin Brady, R-Texas, is making some changes in the panel’s senior staff. Machalagh Carr, who’s been serving as the oversight staff director, is now general counsel and parliamentarian. Rachel Kaldahl moves up to oversight staff director, from oversight counsel, and Julia Slingsby is the committee’s new communications director. She’d been working in the office of Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., as deputy communications director.
Emily Newman is joining the global public affairs team at FedEx after serving as communications director for Rep. Adrian Smith, R-Neb. She’s being succeeded in Smith’s office by Matt Goulding, who starts the new job on Monday. Goulding has been holding down the press secretary’s job in the office of Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Fla.
House Committee on Natural Resources Chairman Rob Bishop, R-Utah, named Parish Braden as the panel’s new deputy staff director, succeeding Todd Ungerecht, who is retiring from the committee. Braden has been serving as communications director since 2015. Kristina Baum, who joined the committee this week, is taking the communications job. She comes to the Natural Resources panel from Chevron Phillips Chemical where she served as the company's chief spokesperson. Her prior Capitol Hill experience includes serving as communications director for the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee and press secretary for the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.
The National Restaurant Association appointed Roy Jackson as executive vice president of development and industry relations. Jackson recently retired from Coca-Cola after more than 20 years in various leadership positions at the company. He currently serves as chairman of the Board of Advisors for the Multicultural Foodservice and Hospitality Alliance, and is a trustee of Union College in Schenectady, N.Y.
Valent U.S.A. hired William “Bill” Hendrix as vice president of technology, where he’ll oversee all research and development functions, as well as all regulatory activities for the crop protection firm. He succeeds Eric Johnson, who moves into an advisory role with Valent and parent company, Sumitomo Chemical. Hendrix joins Valent from Dow AgroSciences, where he held a range of technology leadership positions over the past 28 years. He most recently served as U.S. field R&D leader where he supervised a team of scientists for field, turf and urban research and a field station for the Coastal Crops R&D program.
The Almond Alliance of California named Elaine Trevino as its new president and CEO. Most recently, Trevino was president of the consulting company California Strategic Solutions. Before that, she served as a deputy secretary at the California Department of Food and Agriculture for governors Arnold Schwarzenegger and Gray Davis. In that role she oversaw the California specialty crop block-grant funding allocation as well as the international trade programs and the statewide county fair network.
Purdue professor Michael Gunderson is the new director of the university’s Center for Food and Agricultural Business. Gunderson, who has been the center’s associate director since 2012, takes over for Allan Gray, who will assume the role of executive director. Both appointments begin May 1. Gunderson earned his doctorate in agricultural economics from Purdue in 2006. He served as assistant professor, then associate professor for the University of Florida’s College of Agricultural Life Sciences before returning to Purdue as an associate professor in 2012.
The directors of Wisconsin-based Edge Dairy Farmer Cooperative have elected a new president to succeed John Pagel, who was killed in an airplane accident in late February. The new president is Brody Stapel, who farms at Double Dutch Dairy along Lake Michigan in Cedar Grove, Wis. Stapel was elected to the board in 2016 and has been serving as vice president since January. The board also elected Todd Doornink as vice president. Doornink farms at Jon-De Dairy in northwestern Wisconsin and has been on the board since 2011.
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