The Art of Advocacy: Effectively Communicating with Policymakers

Speaker: Lydia Whitman

Lydia Whitman is a clinically trained social worker and life experience trained farmer, conservation planner, and program manager experienced in working with a host of people and organizations. Lydia is a self-trained farmer with some serious people skills. She has extensive experience in collaborating with diverse government, non-profit and for-profit groups to achieve partnerships to advance conservation and outreach in the United States, Canada, Mexico and Ghana. Her work experience began in clinical social work in a hospital setting then transitioned to outpatient substance abuse counseling. She had the opportunity to transition to full time farming in East Central Iowa and is still engaged in production agriculture. She was engaged to work for the Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship in a policy development and community engagement role in 2017, then was recruited to serve as a Program Manager for the National Bison Association in 2022. She identifies that the key to social work is studying and understanding the complex systems that we are all forced to work through in life- then help remove the barriers that get in the way of folks truly flourishing.