Embracing Your Gifts and Finding Your Place in Agriculture with Coach Kiah

This week, Venessa Wood interviews Kentucky-based speaker and entrepreneur Kiah Burchett, a seventh-generation California rancher who calls herself a “Kentuckifornian.” Kiah shares her rural cattle ranch upbringing, their commercial herd and Corriente roping cattle, and how attending the Agriculture Future of America conference broadened her view of careers in agriculture. She recounts filming “Backroad Cowgirls,” a pivotal conversation with her grandfather (“Roots aren’t meant to keep you stuck; roots are meant to help you rise”), and encouragement for the next generation to find their place in ag. She explains how she moved to Kentucky after a Germany exchange program funded by selling cattle, landed a Kentucky Beef Council job, and met her husband at the state fair. She discusses entrepreneurship, motherhood as a clarifier (“thin things out”), comparison, shame, confidence through action, breaking generational patterns, handling “mean girls,” and pivoting careers.