Brad Vissering of Bloomington started Sept. 16, as a senior credit analyst in the credit services division, based at the financial cooperative’s headquarters in Mahomet.

How did your education and previous work experience help prepare you for this role?

I was raised on my family’s Livingston County grain and hog farm and graduated from Flanagan-Cornell High School. There, I gained an appreciation for the quality of people, landscape, and lifestyle of Rural America.

Then I attended the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and received bachelor’s and master’s degrees in agricultural and consumer economics.

After college, I worked for 33 years in the agricultural finance industry – 14 years at MetLife as an agricultural finance director, 12 years at Heartland Bank and Trust as a lending vice president, and seven years for Farm Business Farm Management as a field staff member.

I was drawn to Farm Credit Illinois based on the cooperative, relationship-based business model that puts the farmer-members first.

If you had to pick one job on the farm to do full-time, what would it be?

Business management, including grain marketing.