Exclusive: Meet Dr. Bethany Dado-Senn

In this week's exclusive episode of Coffee in the Barn, we're thrilled to introduce you to Dr. Bethany Dado-Senn, a dynamic force in the agribusiness sector and a shining example of balancing a demanding career with family life. Hailing from northwestern Wisconsin, Bethany grew up immersed in the world of dairy farming, managing calves on her family's 500 cow dairy farm. Her passion for the science behind dairy farming propelled her to pursue higher education, earning her BS, MS, and PhD in areas that underscore the significant impacts of environmental factors on calf development. 

Currently serving as a calf and heifer specialist for Vita Plus Corp, Bethany's work spans across Wisconsin and Minnesota, helping dairy farmers achieve their calf-rearing goals. Alongside her professional achievements, Bethany is a dedicated mother to two young girls, navigating the complexities of motherhood and a demanding career with grace and determination. 

This episode delves into Bethany's journey through academia and her transition into the professional world, offering a candid look at the challenges and joys of juggling family responsibilities with professional commitments. Bethany's story is a testament to the power of community support, resilience, and the importance of pursuing one's passions. 

Join us for an inspiring conversation that not only highlights Bethany's contributions to agribusiness but also provides valuable insights into achieving work-life harmony. Whether you're a young professional, a parent navigating similar challenges, or simply someone interested in the behind-the-scenes lives of women in agriculture, this episode promises rich, empowering content that resonates with all. 

Support our mission at Coffee in the Barn by becoming a subscriber. Your contribution helps us bring more stories like Bethany's to the forefront, offering personal development tips, in-depth content, and a unique perspective on the complexities of life and career in agribusiness. 

Transcript

Morgan
 0:00:00
 Welcome to this week's episode of Coffee in the Barn. This week we're going to be mixing it up a little bit and showcasing some exclusive content behind the scenes with our speakers. The whole idea behind Coffee in the Barn is a passion project hopefully turning into an awesome nonprofit for women in agribusiness. Your support would mean a lot as we get started. I'm going to go towards the production costs of the podcast. You can help support us by only $3 a month. Subscribers gain exclusive access to in-depth content, personal development tips, and an insider's view on navigating the complexities of life and career with expertise and empathy.

Morgan
 0:00:41
 This episode is just a snapshot of some of the content that will be available through this monthly subscription. With that, let's dig into this week's episode and we thank you all for listening. This week we are joined with Dr. Bethany Dado-Seen, and she is a calf and heifer specialist for Vita Plus Corp, serving dairy farmers across Wisconsin and Minnesota in reaching their calf goals. She hails from northwestern Wisconsin where she grew up and continues to manage calves on her family's 500 cow dairy farm. She earned her BS and PhD from the University of Wisconsin Madison and MS from the University of Florida where she studied the impacts of heat stress on early life calf development. She's also the mom of two young girls. We have the pleasure of speaking with her today to learn a little bit more about her journey of receiving her PhD in tandem with Pretty good. How are you? Busy as ever. 

Bethany
 0:01:44
 Yeah. Yeah, I actually feel I had a big team meeting today for yesterday for a customer. So now that that's over, I feel like I can finally tackle the rest of the to do list. So that's actually kind of a good feeling. So yeah, trade show season, you know, January, February, March.
 
 Well, I guess March isn't over yet.

Morgan
 0:02:02
 March hasn't even started yet. Our's is just starting.

Bethany
 0:02:07
 My March and my April are insane. And there's PDPW, Central Plains, Dairy, Calf and Heifer. We have some calf workshops the first half of the month. So yeah, my Tuesdays through Thursdays, I'm like hardly home. Do you have a lot of overnight? Not usually, no. Usually I make it home. That's nice. Yeah. How about you?

Bethany
 0:02:28
 For the most part, I can stay.

Morgan
 0:02:30
 Obviously the trade shows that I can't schedule or don't have any control over when they are, I'll have like a night or two where I'm gone. But for the most part, because Garrett's still in the Air Force in Madison, so he works two days on, four days off. Doesn't matter if it's a holiday or a weekend. So I try, for the most part, have the flexibility where I can schedule my travel when he's home so that we don't have to have grandma and grandpa or someone spend the night or have them spend the night at someone else's house.

Bethany
 0:03:10
 Yeah, we've certainly done that before. Not super frequently, but frequently enough.

Morgan
 0:03:17
 Do you get a lot of home office time or not really?

Bethany
 0:03:20
 I try to have one to two days a week. It kind of has been a little sturdy, though. Like, last week was all week, but then March is like gone. Yeah, gone. Because I think, like I said, Tuesdays and Thursdays are all like workshops, and I haven't even – like, I haven't scheduled any farm visits yet, which kind of pop up sporadically.

Morgan
 0:03:41
 So. But you can kind of schedule those like more like when you're available type thing, right?
 
 

Bethany
 0:03:47
 Yeah, right. And that just comes down to boundary setting and being aware of my time management to say I am not available on Monday, even though my calendar says that I am, you know.

Morgan
 0:03:57
 Are those your kind of office days or Monday, Friday?

Bethany
 0:04:00
 Is that how you kind of- Yeah, I usually try to do Monday Fridays. But this Monday I did a farm visit. It's kind of, again, that's where I need to be better about, nope, not available. Is that just to help with your mental sanity and organization for the week? So the problem is, I don't know what your territory range is. It sounds like it's probably similar. I am very consistently driving two and a half to three hours. And so by the time I go to the farm, a couple farms and go back, it's like all day, at least 530, six o'clock, I do things with the girls, I maybe get an hour to myself before I need to go to sleep to feed calves in the morning. So like anything related to farm reports or anything like that, it's just like, when am I supposed to do it? You know, so like, So I need at least one office day to at very least catch up with that. But then, like I said, we have these workshops coming up, so we do a fair amount of training.

Bethany
 0:04:58
 So it's all the material design for that. Presentations. Article writing. Yeah, so I love office days. I actually, if I had a full office job, I wouldn't be upset.

Morgan
 0:05:14
 sad. But yeah. When you are you feeding calves at your parents farm? Yeah. Every morning?

Bethany
 0:05:24
 Um, for the most part, yeah. Like yesterday morning, I told my mom, I was like, I'm not going to come out because it should be getting better now because we've just been going through like some just different employee things. So it has been just my mom and I, but now we have somebody else who can probably sub in more regularly. So like yesterday he was available. So I was like, I have a big meeting, you got it.

Morgan
 0:05:43
 How many calves?

9
 0:05:46
 It's about 60.

Morgan
 0:05:47
 We can get in, we can get into this.

Bethany
 0:05:49
 All right.

Morgan
 0:05:50
 This is the whole topic of today is just kind of learning more about you and just kind of your journey through school and motherhood and how you kind of got to where you are today. So do you want to kind of just give our or start off by giving the audience a little bit of a background on how you how you grew up. I know we went to college together. That's how we met. I lived with your husband for a little while. Let's clarify in a co-ed fraternity type situation. In a co-op house with 12 females and 12 males. Yes. No. All right. So, separate rooms. Yes. And a very fun house. 

Bethany

Yeah, so my name is Bethany. Hello everyone. Thanks for listening. I'm originally from northwestern Wisconsin. My parents moved around a couple times before returning to my mom's family dairy in 2000 and they took over the dairy there. They milk about 500 registered Holstein cattle. And so I grew up doing all the typical dairy kid things of showing cows in the summer and feeding calves and occasionally milking the cows. It was good, right?

Bethany
 0:07:07
 And then also that typical dairy kid, like, oh, I'm never, ever going to do this because this is a lot, and it still is, but I kind of fell in love with the science side of dairy farming. There's a lot of decision-making that goes on that is supported by science that I don't think maybe the general public knows about. Same on the swine side, really any sort of our livestock species. We have a lot of research that supports our decisions and how to best care for our animals. So I fell in love with that and I was like, you know what, I'm going to go to school for dairy science and I'm going to take it all the way. My dad also has his PhD in dairy science, so I did have some inspiration for that. But so I went to UW, like you said, Morgan, we were in the same class there for our undergrad degrees. And I studied dairy science and genetics and did all of the fun dairy things there and met all sorts of amazing people. And then when it came time to look to where to do my master's, my undergraduate advisor pulled me into her office one day and she said, you know, I have a PhD student that just graduated and she's starting a faculty position down in Florida. And I was like, respectfully, like, no thank you, there's no cows in Florida. But because she was my advisor, I'll give her the time of day, we'll see what it's about.

Bethany
 0:08:24
 And I went down and toured at Florida along with a couple other universities and kind of fell in love with the program there and really bought into what this new young faculty was looking to accomplish. Her name is Jimena Laporta and we studied heat stress in both the dry pregnant cow and then her calf that's just dated in the last trimester. And so the kind of main focus of all that was mammary development. I'm a lactation physiologist by training. And so looking at how cellular turnover happens during this dry period, which for those who aren't familiar, just there is kind of a difference between like certain mammals like cows and humans and rodents, whereas humans and rodents, when we stop lactating, our mammary glands kind of go through a pretty significant cell death stage and the gland basically goes back to a very non-lactating state. Whereas with dairy cows, we have more of this turnover process where a number of the cells die, but there's also a lot of regeneration that goes on at that time. And so that's why it's so important that we treat this dry period with a lot of management strategy instead of just kind of viewing it as a vacation for the cow. There's a lot going on. And then also, that's the third trimester for the calf, which is when they're growing at the highest rate, and so a lot's going to go on there too. So all that to say, did my master's in that and decided to continue on for the PhD with Jimena as well. About halfway through that, she actually took a faculty position back at UW.

Bethany
 0:10:10
 Which was, yeah, yeah. Somebody, one of my grad student friends at Florida called it fortuitous, or serendipitous. And I was like, yep, that's what it is. It's serendipitous. Which was so nice because at that time, I had one daughter and when we started at UW, I had another one on the way.

Bethany
 0:10:30
 So it was very nice to be close to family, to have some help with raising kids as I tackled the rest of the PhD and finished that. I guess I should have put years on that. I was in undergrad from 2012 to 16, master's from 16 to 18, and then PhD from 18 to 22. So finished in 2022 and started with a regional nutrition company, Vita Plus, and then worked on the calf team there. So I get to kind of use my background in calf environmental management and mammary development and help farmers raise really strong calves. motherhood. I am a huge, huge advocate for graduate students in general, but especially those that are navigating parenthood during graduate school. There's a reason why there's not a lot of us, because it does have a unique set of challenges, but there's also a unique set of joys, right? Like, I think especially because Ximena also had young children shortly before I did. She was very understanding and gave me the space to take a maternity leave and bring my daughters to experiments when it was safe and when it made sense. So that really, really helped, right? But also just the community of young professionals who were all, you know, not making a ton of money, but we all find ways to have fun and they really welcomed in my family. And so that was really great. And honestly, the only thing I tell like other students in grad school is like, it's honestly not that bad of an idea to have kids in grad school because you're on state health insurance. So it's pretty cheap. So yeah, my kids bookended my PhD. One was born at the start of my program and the other was born while I was writing my dissertation.

Morgan
 0:12:28
 So two girls.

Morgan
 0:12:30
 I give you major kudos for being able to balance motherhood and going through grad school because I don't know. I worked full time and got my master's and took classes and I don't know how I would have managed having a baby in there as well as, you know, being thousands of miles away from home.

Bethany
 0:12:52
 Yeah, that was honestly kind of the toughest part. I was very fortunate. You know, like they talk about the village and motherhood and parenthood in general, I guess I should say, because dads also go through this too. But especially for our generation, that community gets smaller and smaller. And I recognize the privilege that I have to still have a very robust community. My mom came down a lot. When I would have an intense project, she'd come down for a period of time to help with my daughter. My husband was very supportive. We had a church community down in Florida. So, you know, I think that's something that I would often bring up when people would talk about, like, oh, I don't know how you did it. And I don't mean to sound like a martyr when I talk about it.

Morgan
 0:13:32
 We just figure it out.

Bethany
 0:13:34
 Yeah, exactly. That's what I told them, right? Right? Like, you just, you do it because you have to, and you also, like, do your darndest to find that community. And I had no shame in asking for that community help.

Bethany
 0:13:50
 Right? And I think maybe that's just, maybe it's Midwestern or, because other friends have commented on that too, right? Like, man, like, your family, like, go, just bends over backwards for each other. And I'm like, I don't know, it's just kind of an expectation, right? And so- I think that's how we grew up though. I mean, I think, because you're one of four kids, right?

Morgan
 0:14:07
 Are you the oldest?

Bethany
 0:14:08
 I am.

Morgan
 0:14:09
 Yeah, so I'm the oldest of four too. And you grew up in the, with a family owned company and everyone just kind of pitched in when you needed to. And I was in, I wasn't an egg, but my dad was, we had third generation heating and cooling company where you know dad was gone for 60-70 hours a week and mom raised the kids and we pitched in when we needed to and exactly I very much echo what what you said we're very fortunate that we have the support system that we have and being you know our moms raised our raised raised us I would say you know dads were there. But with that support, I don't think I don't want to speak for you. But I know that I probably wouldn't be able to have the success in the career that I have, and still be able to have a family that I want and like raise them the way that I do. If I did not have that extra support with through my husband and through my family as well.

Bethany
 0:15:10
 Exactly. 100%. And, you know, like I said before, like, and this will echo through the rest of the podcast, right? Like, I recognize that everyone's life story with all that is different and that there's immense privilege to have all of that. But I'm very grateful. Like, there's no way. So, so now with my role with Vita Plus, I do, I do regional travel, not a ton of overnights, but the occasional one.

Bethany
 0:15:36
 And my husband also works kind of in the dairy space. So there are occasions where, you know, it's like I'm meeting at five in the morning and he's already gone from the day before. And so it's, that is like the constant struggle of, okay, like let's plan out the month. And, but it's a three-party system. It's my parents, myself, and my husband, you know.

Bethany
 0:15:56
 I also have wonderful in-laws. They just happen to live across the state. In case they happen to listen to this podcast, they're also awesome. So that, I think maybe that's a little bit, like you said, it's a little bit of a Midwestern thing. It's a little bit of, I do see a lot of that in the farming community, right? It's a big reason why a lot of people farm is for the family purposes. And so I'm not immune to that, yeah.

Morgan
 0:16:24
 Yeah, and I know I mentioned, I think I mentioned this in one of our previous podcasts, but that was one of the, since I didn't grow up in ag, that was one of the things that drew me to having a career in ag was I was able to see the same family values that I grew up with echoed within agriculture. And I think capturing, you know, there's the question of, we don't have enough labor. How do we attract more people into the agriculture industry? I think expanding on what we do and you know part of that is through what we're trying to do with this podcast and just educating the consumer and the general public is what are our core values within ag and how does that reciprocate to other areas of everyone else's lives.

Bethany
 0:17:13
 Mm-hm, right, and to answer that question, I think when I reflect on what are my core values being a participant of agriculture, both as an allied industry member and a farmer. We were getting more and more of the challenge on the farm side, right? Develop your five farm culture or your value standpoints. And when I think about my parents' theory, the ones that come to mind, both based on their values and like, where my brother and I, I guess all of my siblings, but my brother and I are the ones that are closest ties to the farm now.

Bethany
 0:17:48
 It would be things like, you know, community, science, and compassion, right? Like if we have those three things, like you can build a really strong business.

Morgan
 0:18:05
 Most definitely.

3
 0:18:06
 Yeah.

Morgan
 0:18:07
 Or what are some of the biggest challenges or is there any time points through your career that you faced like some major milestones that you can recall and how you kind of overcame those? Great question.

Bethany
 0:18:24
 So back to that whole advocacy for grad students, I do consider graduate school a part of my career, right? You're still a professional there even though you're in school. So I think kind of the biggest hurdle that my family faced was after my second was born. She was born with a cleft lip. Not a major one, thankfully, but it still did require surgery. So as I mentioned before, this was right around the time I was writing my dissertation, and I was starting to apply for an interview for jobs, which for all of our young professionals listening, applying for jobs out of, for your first job is like another full-time job. It's intense. Advisors are in academia, which applying for academic positions is also intense, but you know Anyways, so is doing that right? And so she had her surgery

Bethany
 0:19:17
 It was very tough on my husband and I to kind of coordinate schedules with all of that And then she wouldn't take the bottle after she was out of surgery. So like I would Rush to an interview. I would tell them, you know, I have two to three hours and then like I have to go, you know, and to the conversation around boundary setting, again, being a Midwesterner, I'm not always the best at that. So it would be like creeping on two, three hours and like my mammary glands are like ready to go. And my poor child's... I called it the spidey senses. Yep. That's the oxytocin right there. Yep. Your oxytocin is starting to surge, your body is telling you you need to go.

Bethany
 0:20:03
 And I had a difficult time setting the boundary of, I told you two to three hours, it has been two to three hours and I have to go, right? So that was really challenging. That's part of the reason why I ended up at the company I was at is because they had a day long interview process. And they were so understanding of, yep, you have to leave every two to three hours to go and feed your baby, you do that, you know, and I did. And it was still a little janky because, you know, like my mom would come to the office with Campbell in the car and then I'd feed her in the car and then I'd go back into the interviews. But they were very understanding and that was important to me that they were. It also helped that they are based out of Madison, so it's the same city I lived in. But, so that was very challenging. Oh, and we also bought a house in that window of time. You all are moving pieces. Yeah, so my husband and I said, if we could get through this, we can get through anything.

Bethany
 0:21:04
 And I've kept that with me ever since then, right? You know, as we faced like those small hurdles, like we got through that, you know, we were there for our children, we wrapped up a certain stage of life and started another one. And yeah, and I guess my biggest take home for others kind of going through maybe the professional school life is to give yourself grace through that transition period, it's going to be challenging no matter whether or not there are other human beings relying on you or not. But it's bittersweet to end a professional degree, but it's also very exciting to start the next step.

Morgan
 0:21:45
 You kind of mentioned, but you kind of always knew that you wanted to go get your PhD.

Bethany
 0:21:49
 Yeah, and I know that's a little strange, but yep, that was always the end goal.

Morgan
 0:21:54
 Is your dad a professor? Or is he- He was.

Bethany
 0:21:57
 Yeah, he did that for a stint. He did a nutrition work for a stint and then decided, I like using my hands. I like being home for my family. And so they moved from Michigan back to the farm. Yeah, so that was cool. And then my mom has her master's in egg ed. So yeah, I guess I forgot to mention that I did move back to the home area. I'm about five minutes from the home farm now.

Morgan
 0:22:23
 Yeah, I always, I have a friend that lives in Baldwin.

Bethany
 0:22:28
 Oh, great. And so every single time I am driving to the cities or to Baldwin or whatever, I'm like, oh yeah, that's where Bethany lives. Yep, yep, that's the exit to get to my neck of the woods. So for those of our podcast listeners who are not from Wisconsin, this is like the northwest corner of Wisconsin, about an hour and a half from the Twin Cities.

Morgan
 0:22:45
 Which is a really, it's very Northwoodsy.

Bethany
 0:22:49
 It is, right? So for those who are from around here, you probably know the saying of like north of eight, that's really when you're a hick. I'm two minutes south of eight, of highway eight. So I just make the cut, but yep, getting pretty woodsy up here. And it's nice too, I'm a good distance from lots of little pockets of dairy over in like central Minnesota, all the way to central Wisconsin, so that's my day travel gets through a lot of there.

Morgan
 0:23:16
 So do you cover all of Wisconsin and Minnesota?

Bethany
 0:23:19
 I cover pretty much like the northern half of Wisconsin and then all of Minnesota, but I'll go wherever our staff needs me, right? There's four of us on the Young Stock team at Vita Plus, and a couple are based in southern Wisconsin, and one is based over in Indiana. So he covers like Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, Illinois a little bit. And, but you know, you develop relationships with certain staff members regardless of where they live

Bethany
 0:23:48
 and support them. You make it happen because serving my staff and serving our customers is a really important part of my job that I take really seriously.

Morgan
 0:23:59
 Most definitely. Yeah, that's what, you know, people are like, well, where, what's your territory? And I was like, well, like a six hour radius of southern Wisconsin. I was like, wherever I needed, I'll, I'll go.

Bethany
 0:24:09
 Yep.
 The Midwest.

Morgan
 0:24:11
 Yeah.

Bethany
 0:24:12
 Which is still, you know, compared to some, some positions out of grad school, like my territory is smaller, right? It's not like the whole US or the whole North America. So I'm grateful for that.

Morgan
 0:24:26
 I was going to ask what was your advice, but you kind of already said to give grace.

Bethany
 0:24:31
 Yeah, yeah.

Morgan
 0:24:32
 You already hinted on that. I already, I, one of my other questions was what strategies do you use to maintain a healthy,

Bethany
 0:24:37
 I mean, I struggle with the saying work-life balance because what does that really mean? No, it's just a chameleon.

Morgan
 0:24:46
 Different for everyone. Yeah. What strategies do you use to maintain kind of the work-life balance that works for you and your family?

Bethany
 0:24:54
 So this might not work for everyone, but I do a lot of blending, right? I kind of mentioned that in grad school, like my girls would come with me to research projects. I feed cows at the home farm now, and the girls will come with me for that if it's in the afternoon. And there's times where I turn the computer off early because it's time to go focus on family. And trying to rid the guilt from that is a struggle, but it's also reality. And like I said, I work with a very family-oriented company that I know understands that. So as to your question about advice, I think the only other thing that I would add is to anyone who is looking for that first job or looking for a new job, like just really be true to yourself and know that you have the skills to do what it takes. Don't let that imposter syndrome sneak in. Like we, I think especially women, like don't know the innate skills that we have, and sometimes the confidence isn't there. And I think that's part of the reason why I made it through grad school the way that I did and am loving my job is because I am confident that I, if I don't know it, I can at least figure it out. Or ask. Yes. Yep. And honestly, I'm confident that a lot of the times I do know it because I put in the work to learn and I love learning. So that might sound conceited to say, but it's what I want to pass on to our young female professionals and young professionals in general is you can be confident and you have the skills.

Morgan
 0:26:33
 Yeah, and I think you always need to be continuing to learn and grow to better yourself and better your family.

Bethany
 0:26:42
 Exactly, yeah. And honestly, if you are farmer facing, farmers love to see that. As long as you're willing to learn with them and grow with them, that makes a big difference.

Bethany
 0:26:51
 Yeah, awesome.

Morgan
 0:26:52
 Well, I think, thank you very much for joining us on this podcast journey and helping to empower women in agriculture and I really appreciate you joining us today.

Bethany
 0:27:07
 Yeah, thanks so much Morgan for the invite, I appreciate it. It was nice being able to kind of catch up a little bit since our paths is kind of, you know, we follow each other on Facebook and whatever, but we really haven't been able to kind of talk. You'd think being in separate livestock species wouldn't make a big difference, but it does in terms of circles.

Morgan
 0:27:24
 Yes, but I'm sure, are you going to be at Midwest Animal Science at all?

Bethany
 0:27:28
 No, I'll be in Madison around that time though. So let me know. Well, if you're there, I'll be around. That's good, because that's in your backyard, at least. Yes, that's one of the conferences where I'm very much like, oh, yeah, I'll definitely be here. Yes, sign me up. Or NPIC, which is in the Dells.

Morgan
 0:27:47
 Perfect.

Bethany
 0:27:48
 All right, I better let you get going.

Morgan
 0:27:50
 Thank you very much.

Bethany
 0:27:51
 Yeah, have a good one, Morgan. See you. See you.

Morgan
 0:27:53
 Bye!