Women in Agribusiness: Advancing Industry Leadership and Expertise

Nicole Hancock
Partner, Litigation

Abstract

Nicole Hancock, Partner in Stoel Rives’ Boise office, shares her career journey from a Ninth Circuit clerkship to in-house counsel at global agribusiness leader Syngenta, and back to private practice serving agribusiness clients. Drawing on her industry experience, Hancock has spent more than a decade shaping the Women in Agribusiness Summit as a member of its inaugural advisory board.

Transcript

I am Nicole Hancock, and I am a partner in our Boise office. I started at Stoel in 2003 right after my clerkship on the Ninth Circuit and I worked until 2006 when I went in-house with Syngenta. Syngenta is a global agribusiness company, and I was there for two years before coming back into private practice and continued to work with them from the private practice side as well as other agribusiness companies. Once I came back into private practice after having worked for an agricultural company, I continued to work on agribusiness matters with agribusiness clients.

I joined the board, the first inaugural board for Women in Agribusiness. We had the first initial summit. I think we had about 300 individuals attend that and it is now over 1,000, and I continue to serve on the board now, and it has been about 10 years that I have been on that board, the advisory board that helps support the summit and the content that goes into that. It is a substantive conference that services the industry as a whole and it focuses on developing women who are in different agribusiness companies, helping them substantively advance their knowledge base and then network in a way that helps them advance the interests of their career.