5 questions with Zophia: Meet an agricultural and food business management alumna

Five Questions with Zophia

Zophia Raleigh
Bachelor of Science in Agricultural and Food Business Management, 2019
Transportation and Logistics Business Analyst at Cargill Salt North America

Describe your current job. What does it look like on a weekly basis?

My current job consists of big data evaluation to identify patterns, answer questions, and provide direction to help my management make decisions. I utilize Tableau, Alteryx, Hadoop, SAS, and Power BI to process data and make visuals to aid in this process. My day-to-day job consists of answering one-off questions such as “how many shipments of product X did we move last year from A to B on a specific transportation type?” and building out complex applications to streamline processes such as how we budget our freight spend for the next fiscal year. In the last two years, I have had the opportunity to partner on more than 10 projects starting at the ideation phase, and then building out a tool that has only ever been dreamed of before. Through my role, we are able to automate redundancies to help free up our employees to focus on greater value add activities.

What do you most enjoy about your current role?

I love that I get to take people’s ideas and then create a solution to help make their jobs easier. There is a huge amount of satisfaction that comes with hearing the feedback, “This is better than I could have hoped, thank you for improving my workday.”

What made you choose CFANS and the major?

When I was 16 I decided I wanted to work for Cargill and found a mentor within the organization who was willing to mentor someone at that age. After talking with her through my sophomore and junior years of high school, she helped me to see what I wanted to do when I grew up. When she decided I was ready, I had a meeting with her and the current CTO of Cargill and asked which programs they recommended someone attend to be set up for success at Cargill. They replied with the several options, including the University of Minnesota – Twin Cities. I chose UMN because it had the most flexible, affordable, and well rounded program to fit both my job aspirations and passions.

What was the best or most rewarding part about being an agricultural and food business management (AFBM) student?

It would easily have to be the community. AFBM students have to straddle being both a CFANS and a Carlson School of Management (CSOM) student, and there is stress that goes along with trying to fit both models. This environment unites the AFBM community to help each other, where Carlson might compete, and to challenge thought processes where applied economics might not have the same kind of business exposure. It truly helped to sculpt the way I think—to be both data literate and know how to speak business.

How did your experiences in the major support your career goals?

I experienced a clear 1-to-1 with this major. In my current job, I take the analytics background the applied economics classes gave me and pair it with the business acumen from Carlson. This allows me to understand what our supply chain planning teams are asking for and how to articulate that request to our data only people. Being the bridge between the two sides of the company is exactly the situation that the agricultural and food business management major set me up for.

Thanks for sharing more about your experience in our college and beyond, Zophia. We are CFANS proud of you!

Agricultural and food business management is a jointly coordinated major between CFANS and the Carlson School of Management, so students benefit from access to professors, research, and resources from both colleges within the University of Minnesota. Students in this major have priority registration for classes at the Carlson School and can opt to pursue minors offered by the either college that align with their areas of specialization.