Hi, I'm Audrey!
I grew up on a family farm on the central coast of California with my two older sisters and parents. My parents were some of the first people to plant wine grapes in the Paso Robles area in the mid-1980s. We also ranched beef cattle and had a breeding herd and 8-horse hitch of Percheron draft horses. I was active in 4-H and FFA, earning my American Farmer Degree and serving as a State FFA Officer for California in 2002-03. Educating the public about the agriculture industry was an early passion of mine and I got to explore that as a National Beef Ambassador, through the National American Cattlewomen’s Association.
I moved to Chico in the heart of California’s North Valley to attend college in 2003 and fell in love with the town and area - it is my forever home! I earned a bachelor degree in Agri-Science and Education from Chico State. During college I worked on the University Farm and as a bartender and tour guide at Sierra Nevada Brewery. My degree prepared me to be a high school agriculture teacher, but I wasn’t quite ready to enter the high school classroom when I graduated so I moved to El Salvador for a year. My oldest sister was on a Fulbright Scholarship there and was about to have her first child. I lived in the countryside and learned Spanish and about tropical agriculture from sustainable agriculture technicians who worked for a rural cooperative. I volunteered for the organization Cristosal and used my knowledge of agriculture education to start a youth garden club where the young people grew and sold their own vegetables.
When I moved back to Chico I became a lecturer in the College of Agriculture at Chico State and served as their Outreach Coordinator for five years. I loved getting high school students excited about choosing agriculture and Chico State. As a lecturer I inspired college students from various academic backgrounds to engage with agricultural issues and envision a more sustainable food system. I was a member of the first graduating class of Chico State’s Master of Science in Agricultural Education. My thesis research was on changing perceptions and attitudes around sustainability and was awarded 1st place Education Research in the California State University System in 2014.
I felt the itch to return to international development work and took a role doing recruitment and operations for a start-up non-profit, AgriCorps, that sent American College of Agriculture graduates overseas to teach agriculture in middle school and high school classrooms. The recruitment aspect took me on a whirlwind tour of 36 land grant universities in 8 weeks! Then I lived in Ghana, Africa managing volunteers and selecting placement sites for future volunteers.
After a year with AgriCorps I moved back to Chico and started working for Vivayic, a Nebraska based consulting firm. As a learning designer and account manager with Vivayic for 6 years I grew and refined my professional skills. I created learning experiences for diverse audiences, including: adult learners, English language learners, industry professionals, college students, and K-12 learners. I managed large accounts and designed business solutions for organizations including: The World Bank, Texas Beef Council, Almond Board of California, AMVAC, and the National FFA Organization. That experience taught me about stewarding organizational culture and showed me how I could use my unique skill set for creating change.
In 2021 I stepped out into the consulting world on my own, and have been working for myself as The Denney Group ever since. For the first three years of my business, the national food banking non-profit, Feeding America has been my largest client. I’ve loved learning about the charitable food sector and seeing the intersection between where my passion for human rights meets my love of the agriculture industry. I’ve developed several internal initiatives and conducted detailed program evaluation projects. I’ve designed and implemented several capacity building initiatives for food banks including learning continuums and self-assessments that recognize the current performance of an organization in a certain area and then give clear next steps for the organization to improve.
In 2022 I bought my first home in downtown Chico where I live with my two cats Nash and Harper Eleanor. I love playing in my greenhouse, gardening, and reading.