Speaker Category: Main Speakers

Mala Ganiger is R&D lead for Minn-Dak Growers Ltd., located in Grand Forks, ND. This company specializes in buckwheat and mustard milling in the food-based industry. Her responsibilities revolve around buckwheat breeding projects, focusing…

Alyssa Walters is the R&D Research Chef at the premier flour-milling and ingredient company Ardent Mills. In this role, Alyssa creates innovative prototypes and recipes, develops customer solutions with both Traditional Flour and Emerging…

Angie Echols is local to the area, residing in Monticello, MN. She is the Food Security & Regulatory Compliance Manager at Bay State Milling Company, a food ingredient manufacturing company, with 9 US and…

Andrew Heyn owns Elmore Mountain Bread with his wife, Blair Marvin in Northern Vermont.  They bake wood-fired breads using stone ground local grain.  Andrew designed and built his own mill for their bakery, and…

A lineal descendant of the Wahpeton-Sisseton and Mdewakanton Dakota tribes and lifetime Minnesota native, Dana Thompson has worked for nearly a decade within the food sovereignty movement. As co-owner and chief operating officer of…

Education: • Bachelor of Science in agricultural economics, North Dakota State University, Fargo, N.D. • Master of Science in agricultural economics, University of Illinois, Urbana, Ill. Experience: Jirik has more than 17 years of…

Dr. Amrita Ray is a Food Scientist & Technologist with experience in the field of grain science and technology, milling & processing, dough rheology, micronutrient fortification and product development. She has worked on various…

Carlson earned her bachelor’s degree in food science from North Dakota State University.