Her Story
About Megan
I've always had an interest in agriculture, farming, and the financial side of it. Farmers are the cornerstones of America, and I grew up in a community where there were lots of farmers, cattle ranchers, and people who had their own businesses around agriculture. That's what got me involved in this field. I work in IT for Farm Credit Financial Partners, where we develop and manage the systems that agricultural banks use to finance and process loans for farmers. We develop online banking applications for farmers and basically manage the software that an agricultural bank would use when inputting a loan for a farmer-borrower. My typical day involves touchpoint meetings, checking emails, getting into our systems to see what's wrong, reviewing reported bugs, scoping modifications, reading business requirement documentation and procedural business practices from our customers, and then jumping into any reported issue or project that needs assistance. For example, I might work on figuring out the mapping for collateral against a loan, making sure the integration between systems is coming in correctly, and confirming how collateral is calculated and pulled into our systems. The project I'm most proud of is our online banking platform, making updates that really benefit the farmer-borrower because they're the ones actually logging into the website to check their balances, make transactions, and pay bills. Making sure it is simple, readable, and has all the information they need has a real impact on a farmer-borrower's day-to-day life.
Her Interview
Ten minutes with Megan
01What’s the best career advice you’ve ever received?
Never give up on yourself, always remember you belong there too, intimidation is overrated.
02What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?
Absorption, take in everything you can, and know your worth when you do go the extra mile to absorb everything
03What are the biggest challenges or opportunities in your field right now?
One challenge is really learning how to incorporate AI into all of this and how it can help you. That has been the main focus so far - how AI can help you in this industry, whether it be writing of documents for requirements for any changes that are implemented into the systems. From my experience, it's been a bit of a challenge learning AI to the best of its ability so it can really help you. But also, in my experience, you still very much have to know what's going on. You can plug in information and it can spit back whatever you need it to say, but you still have to very much know what's going on. There's also a lot of different kinds of AI - there's ChatGPT and other things a person can use every day. So really, it's just learning how to use that to your advantage and still making it your own and authentic. That can very much be a challenge.
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