Page 12 - Time Magazine, Sep. 17, 2018

Firsts

has carried her from Columbia Busi-
ness School to Mobil and Pepsi and
eventually to the CEO spot at Land
O’Lakes, she’s ready to lead 10,000
employees across the company’s
multiple dairy and agriculture busi-
nesses. And she’d much rather dis-
cuss what she sees as the great chal-
lenge of her work—helping farmers
feed a growing world population
with shrinking resources—than her
personal life. “I’m being announced
as a CEO,” she says. “Not a woman
CEO, an Iowan CEO or a gay CEO.”
The press release announc-
ing Ford’s appointment focused
on her achievements and abilities
and ended with a simple statement
that she lives in Minneapolis with
Schurtz and their three teenagers.
Still, many noticed, and letters
poured in from the LGBTQ com-
munity and beyond. “Everybody
in life has something that makes
them feel, Can I be comfortable
being who I am?” Ford says. “To
hear from parents of children who
are afraid, to hear from profes-
sionals, men and women, who are
challenged, I want to say to them,
You’re O.K., just who you are.”
As open as Ford is able to be
today, she realizes it’s not the same
for everyone—and looks back on
times when she had to make tough Simone Askew
choices. When she was younger, First black woman to lead the Corps of Cadets at West Point
moving up the ladder in conserva-
tive companies, Ford wasn’t always “Coming into the Military Academy, where the ratio is about 80% men to
in a position to share her identity. 20% women, didn’t have a huge impact at first. I was blessed to have great
But since she met Schurtz and mentors who really encouraged and empowered me. But now I see how the
realized they wanted to raise kids imbalance affects the dynamics not only between
together, at about the time of that men and women at the academy but also between the
New York City jog, Ford has led women here. Because we’re such a small minority, there ‘I wasn’t
with her family—which has some- is a sense of having to compensate for what people chosen to be
times meant missing out on oppor- might think is an inherent weakness or deficit. I need to the first. I
tunities. She has considered jobs be on the top of my game. That feeling of being acutely
in cities that are less friendly to the aware of my gender is most apparent when I receive was chosen
LGBTQ community and, think- criticism from people who don’t know me. You just have
to wonder, if they have no idea who I am and have never to be the First
ing of how that might affect her
kids, turned them down. One pro- met me to assess my weaknesses or my strengths, Captain.’
spective employer in a city Ford why are they so angry about my achievements? But
declines to name said there were I never saw my race or gender as a roadblock to me
“pockets” of the town where they’d being selected or even for me being competitive as a candidate. I resolved in
be accepted. “I don’t need to be in elementary school that if someone didn’t like me because of things I couldn’t
change, then that was their problem. I wasn’t chosen to be the first. I was
a pocket,” she says. “I need to live a chosen to be the First Captain.”
good, full life.” And now, she does. MOLLY MATALON FOR TIME
—LUCY FELDMAN
Askew, now a Rhodes scholar, graduated from West Point in May
48 TIME September 17, 2018