By Brady Drake | Photos provided by Michelle Tressel
When Michelle Tressel speaks to an agricultural audience, she likes to begin with a little competition.
She asks people to raise their hands if they graduated with fewer than 100 students. Then she narrows the field: fewer than 50, fewer than 30, fewer than 20. As the number of hands dwindles, she offers her own answer.
“I graduated with 11 kids.”
The exercise gives people something to participate in before she asks them to listen. It also tells them something about the person at the front of the room: Long before her work involved agricultural data, Tressel’s life was connected to agriculture. She knows what it means to come from a small rural community because she did.
Today, Tressel leads MyAgData, a Fargo-headquartered agricultural technology company that has built what she calls a data rail for agriculture. Giving the grower full control of their data and who it is shared with, the company connects the equipment and farm software producers already use, including John Deere Operations Center, Case IH and Climate FieldView, and carries that field data securely to the places it needs to go. That starts with electronic acreage reports for the USDA’s Farm Service Agency and Risk Management Agency, and increasingly extends to the sustainability, low-carbon fuel and specialty crop programs that ask farmers to prove what they grew and how. The goal is simple: a farmer’s data should do the paperwork, so the farmer doesn’t have to.
But ask Tressel about the career that brought her there, and the conversation quickly moves beyond software. She talks about the people she has worked with, the relationships she has maintained, and the importance of understanding the problem before trying to solve it. Those are the skills she believes have allowed her to move across industries—and the ones she continues to rely on in agriculture.
A Return To Familiar Ground
Tressel grew up in a small farming community in Manitoba, Canada. Her parents owned a welding company that served growers directly in the field, and farming reached further back into the family’s history: Relatives on both her mother’s and father’s sides had immigrated to Canada and become farmers.
Agriculture was part of her family’s livelihood, not simply the scenery around her childhood.
She eventually left Canada for college in the United States and built a career that took her into several different sectors. She began as an auditor at Ernst & Young and later worked with Cargill’s Black River business in private equity and hedge funds. Agriculture remained connected to her professional life, even when it was not the central focus.
Another chapter brought her to Health e(fx), where she worked in regulatory reporting related to the Affordable Care Act. Equifax completed its acquisition of the company in 2021. After that sale, Tressel received a call about leading sales for MyAgData. The industry was different, but she recognized a connection to the reporting work she had already been doing.
MyAgData’s leadership announcement dates her arrival as chief revenue officer to 2022 and her appointment as CEO to 2023.
For Tressel, the opportunity brought together professional experience and a personal connection.
“But when I had the opportunity to bring what I had done in financial services and in healthcare and bring that back to agriculture, I just jumped at the opportunity,” she said.
That familiarity did not mean she arrived knowing everything she needed to know. Tressel describes entering a new industry as a process of learning its nuances, understanding its institutions, and getting to know the people who hold the knowledge she does not yet have. In North Dakota, she sought connections with organizations including Grand Farm and North Dakota State University.
Her rural background gave her a starting point. It did not replace the work of listening.
Understanding What Farmers Are Building
One of the distinctions Tressel emphasizes about agriculture is the way farmers think about the future.
In her experience, understanding a grower means understanding someone who values independence and may be measuring success far beyond the next business milestone. The operation is not necessarily something to build and eventually sell. It may be something to preserve for the next generation.
“They’re looking at generational wealth. They’re looking at passing on their farms to their family,” she said.
That outlook changes how she thinks about the people MyAgData serves. A farmer’s decisions are connected to the future of a family business, and Tressel believes those priorities have to be understood rather than assumed.
She also describes agriculture as a tight-knit community where trust takes time to establish and can be lost quickly. Following through on a commitment matters. So does understanding that a reputation extends beyond a single transaction.
“IT TAKES A VERY LONG TIME TO BUILD A GOOD REPUTATION.”
Her task is to bring experience from other industries without treating that experience as a substitute for knowing this one.
The Relationships That Keep Going
When Tressel talks about transferable skills, she is not only talking about skills. Sometimes, she is talking about the same people.
Her early experience at Ernst & Young helped connect her to Health e(fx), where EY was a major client. At the time of her interview, she was speaking with that same EY team about potential work in agriculture. A relationship formed in one professional setting had remained relevant through another—and might now become part of a third.
Those connections are not maintained only when there is business to discuss. Tressel still meets every three weeks with an EY partner she worked with through her previous company. The reason, she said, is that they care about each other as people and remain interested in what the other is doing. Years after Health e(fx) was sold, invitations to get together with former colleagues still arrive.
The company’s connection to Fargo developed through a similar series of introductions. A 2024 account published by the NSF AgTech Engine in North Dakota traces MyAgData’s move to a conversation between Tressel and Kathy Cochran at the Prairie Capital Summit in October 2023. That meeting led to connections with people at Grand Farm, NDSU, economic development organizations, and the North Dakota Department of Commerce. By August 2024, the organization was reporting MyAgData’s headquarters move to Fargo.
“IF YOU’RE A REALLY GOOD LEADER, PEOPLE WILL FOLLOW YOU.”
Tressel now serves on the NSF AgTech Engine in North Dakota’s Strategic Advisory Board.
Within her own company, she has also turned to relationships built over time. Much of her senior leadership team consists of people she has worked with before—people whose abilities she has seen beyond a résumé or a well-rehearsed interview.
Giving People Room To Do Their Jobs
Tressel does not argue that there is one personality type or management style that makes someone an effective leader. Different approaches can work, she said, and leaders ultimately have to be able to demonstrate that their companies are accomplishing what they set out to do.
Her own approach centers on collaboration.
“My leadership style focuses a lot around collaboration, focuses around listening. I try to take obstacles out of the way of our mission. I’m here to bring the right people in and give them the tools to do their job,” she said.
That does not remove the responsibility of making difficult decisions. It means making those decisions with the benefit of a team’s knowledge rather than in isolation.
It also means resisting the idea that experience eventually eliminates uncertainty.
“I’ve been doing this for a long time, and I don’t have it figured out,” she said.
Tressel sees learning as a continuing obligation of leadership. Mistakes deserve examination rather than concealment: What happened? What could the team do differently? Was the outcome the result of something within its control?
Sometimes, she acknowledges, there may not have been a better decision available. Even then, the discussion can help a team understand what happened and prepare for what comes next.
She has spent much of her career working with smaller teams in growth phases, an environment she values partly because it allows her to know the people around her. She wants to understand whether their work aligns with their goals, but also what is happening in their lives outside the company.
During her interview, that interest was evident in the way she kept turning questions around. Asked about leadership, she wanted to know how her interviewer approached it. Asked about life outside work, she asked the same question back. Talking about herself, she admitted early in the conversation, was her “least favorite subject.” Learning about someone else came more readily.
Looking Beyond A Good Interview
That curiosity also shapes how Tressel hires.
She is wary of mistaking a polished application for proof that someone can do the work. In her view, artificial intelligence makes that distinction even more important: Candidates have more tools to tailor their résumés, cover letters, and answers to what an employer wants to hear.
The harder question remains whether the person can succeed in the role.
One approach she has used is to give candidates a project and then ask them to explain how they completed it. Where did they get stuck? Did they ask anyone for help? What was the hardest part?
Sometimes, she said, a project is deliberately structured so that it cannot be finished without requesting additional information. The response reveals something a finished assignment alone might not: whether someone recognizes a gap and asks a useful question, struggles without reaching out, or tries to invent an answer.
MyAgData’s internship program offers a longer opportunity to learn how someone works.
Tressel said the company has received support through North Dakota’s Operation Intern program and typically hires about five interns annually, primarily from NDSU, while remaining open to students across the state. The goal is to find people with the right attitude and fit, then help them develop the necessary skills.
At the time of the interview, three full-time team members had come through the internship program. Two interns from the most recent summer were continuing with the company while finishing school.
For people beginning their careers, Tressel’s advice is to pay attention to the impression their work leaves on others. A former colleague may become the person who recommends them for an opportunity they never knew existed.
“Throughout your career, you really want to think about the footprint you’re leaving on your network,” she said.
The Next Good Question
For all the attention Tressel gives to finding the right people, she places just as much importance on understanding them once the conversation begins. An answer is not necessarily the end of a discussion. Often, it is where the useful part starts.
“A lot about being a good leader, a good salesperson, a good interviewer is about asking the next good question, right?” she said.
The follow-up is how she learns more about what a person values, how they think, and what they are trying to accomplish. To Tressel, that comes from genuinely enjoying time with people, not simply moving through a prepared set of questions.
She believes those interpersonal abilities will become more valuable as artificial intelligence changes the work people do. Her concern is not only whether students learn to use new tools, but whether they learn to communicate, present, and contribute effectively alongside them.
That belief reaches into her parenting. When her daughter asked to be excused from speaking in front of her class because it made her uncomfortable, Tressel would not excuse her. She considered it too important a skill to avoid practicing.
Her own advice for public speaking is to shift attention away from personal performance and toward the reason for being there.
“It’s about how you are conveying the message and what you’re passionate about,” she said.
Instead of concentrating on appearance, nerves, or the possibility of losing her place, she tries to concentrate on what the audience needs to hear. Then she gives the people in the room a way to participate.
That is what the graduating-class question accomplishes. Before there is a presentation to deliver, there is a connection to make.
Before The Workday Begins
There is a quieter part of her routine, too. Before work, before other people are up, she walks through her still-quiet neighborhood. Those early walks are when she does much of her thinking and processing.
“My ability to connect that I have through work doesn’t end at the end of the workday,” she said.
Outside work, Tressel’s life includes two teenagers and the activities that come with them. Her daughter plays hockey and tennis. Her son is an avid fisherman who, at the time of the interview, was restoring a boat with his father. Family time often involves sporting events, fishing, boating, and being on the lake.
When she reads, she is more likely to reach for fiction than a biography. She likes science fiction, Stephen King, Game of Thrones, and substantial sagas she can settle into. She also makes time for a close group of friends.
Near the end of the interview, the conversation turned to photographs she might share for the story. There were headshots and images from a speaking appearance. She also offered a childhood photograph of herself with her horses.
But one image she particularly wanted to send was a black-and-white photograph of her grandfather and uncle. She pointed it out while sharing her screen, noting their little toes sticking out. “Those are farm boys,” she said.
It was a fitting choice for a woman whose career has crossed so many industries. Asked for photographs to help tell her own story, Tressel made sure there would be room for the people who came before her.
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