Sara Rader’s journey to building the blueprint for agricultural success

BY MACKENZIE JOHNSON

Editor-in-Chief

Graduating college is a milestone moment.

Leading up to that momentous ceremony, your senior year is filled with the tasks of applying for internships, finalizing required class credits and studying for exams, all while trying to squeeze in those last college memories you’ll one day look back on. 

Although college is a whirlwind in its entirety, senior year takes on a next level form that passes by at the speed of light, and suddenly, the time you thought you had to figure out your after college plans is fastly dwindling. 

Your cap and gown soon wait folded in the backseat of your car, your final grades are submitted and the world is at your fingertips, especially if you're graduating from Tarleton State University's College of Agriculture and Natural Resources department, as the many career avenues offered seem nearly endless. 

However, these innumerable opportunities can be both a blessing and a curse. With so many doors to choose from, picking the right one can be overwhelming, and no agriculturist’s career path looks exactly the same as another’s. 

Tarleton graduate Sara Rader is an agriculturalist who was faced with this same concern after college. 

Now, she’s found herself within the career of her dreams as public relations coordinator at Priefert, an esteemed ranch and rodeo equipment manufacturer.

However, like many college graduates, Rader wasn’t sure of the exact direction she wanted to go with her agricultural communications degree. 

“I did not know what I wanted to do,” Rader said of her plans when she graduated from Tarleton in 2013. “I knew what I was good at, but I just really wasn't ready to leave Stephenville, and I hadn't really been presented with the right opportunity yet.” 

Agriculture is all Rader has ever known, and she has always been heavily involved in the industry through the organizations of the Texas Junior Polled Hereford Association, FFA and 4H.  

“I grew up in Mount Vernon, Texas, on a registered, horned and polled Hereford ranch where my brother and I are actually third-generation Hereford breeders,” Rader said. “However, our roots run even deeper than that, with our family being six generations deep in ranching.”

Due to those historic roots and her passion for giving back to agriculture, Rader started out as an agriculture education major. She quickly realized teaching wasn’t her intended path and bounced around between animal science and animal production majors before discovering that all of her skills and background in agriculture pointed in the direction of an agricultural communications major. 

An agricultural communications major was a perfect fit for Rader, though she wasn’t yet sure where it would lead after graduation. She decided to work for Tarleton’s agriculture department for a year and begin her master’s, until she was offered an internship at Sullivan Supply. After a month or two of traveling to large stock shows with Sullivan, the internship turned into a job offer, and she decided to put her master’s on hold.

“My job with them was to do content curation for an app called The Pulse, which is an app for livestock show results and different advertisements,” Rader said. “I also helped with photography, videography and running the social media account at Sullivan's.”

Later on, Ranch House Designs, an agricultural communications marketing firm owned by Rachel Cutrer, reached out to Rader.

“When she mentioned opening an office in the Fort Worth Stockyards, it immediately caught my attention since Forth Worth had always been on my bucket list of places to live,” Rader said. “I wasn’t actively looking to move at the time, but I knew Iowa probably wasn’t my forever home. The opportunity just felt right.”

Through Ranch House Designs, Rader was able to experience social media management through lots of different companies, and although that was the type of work she loved to do, Rader didn’t love juggling it for multiple companies. 

“My brain is a creative brain. I can never shut it off,” Rader said. “So at midnight, I'd be thinking of something cool for Resistol Hats, when I wasn't even working on their team essentially. I was just doing their social media – so if I came up with an idea, I could pitch it to them, but I could never really see it come to fruition, and I didn't like that.”

Rader decided to part ways with Ranch House Designs after a year and some change. She began freelance work and returned to Sullivan’s before later securing a job at the Cowtown Coliseum in the historic Fort Worth Stockyards. 

“I quickly realized it's a little bit more touristy than what I was looking for long term,” Rader said. “I knew I probably wouldn’t stay there forever, but it was a really nice experience for the chapter of life I was in. I got to meet a lot of great people and also still work with some of those connections that I had made along the way.”

Then the pandemic hit, and as the last person to be hired, Rader knew that once they reached a point of needing to let people go, she would probably be one of the first. 

“I'd always worked in the livestock show cattle industry up until I went to work for the Coliseum,” Rader said. “I really liked that avenue of being able to work for the western realm, not just one niche market.”

That love for the cattle industry led Rader to reach out to previously made contact Chip Tully, Priefert’s vice president of marketing and sales. 

Rader was familiar with Priefert as it’s based out of the town adjacent to her hometown. Although it was the middle of the pandemic and hiring had stalled, she reached out to Tully about a job.

“He told me they weren’t hiring, but encouraged me to send my résumé anyway, saying he’d pass it along to Courtney Dyer, the director of marketing,” Rader said. “After Courtney received my résumé, she invited me to the plant for a ‘conversation’ with no promise of a job since they weren’t actively hiring. The next day, I got a phone call offering me a position.”

Rader has now been at Priefert as a public relations coordinator for upwards of five years now and carries the roles of creating content, managing all of their social media platforms, handling their endorsee and sponsorship relations and playing an intricate role in their quarterly marketing campaigns. 

“I use the skills that I learned at Tarleton just about every day,” Rader said. “Obviously, I’ve sharpened those skills a lot more after being out in the real world for the last 10 years, but the base that I learned at Tarleton certainly built me into the person that I am today.” 

The art of networking has also helped construct both Rader and the stepping stones she’s taken to guide her to the career point she’s at today. 

“I believe that networking is extremely important in any industry that you're a part of,” Rader said. “The thing about our industry is that it's small and very tight knit. “So the saying, ‘It’s not what you know, it’s who you know,’ really does come into play more often than not.”

Without networking and crossing Chip Tully’s path earlier on, it wouldn’t have been as accessible for Rader to have secured her current position at Priefert.  

“Having that meaningful interaction with him got my foot in the door and my résumé got me the rest of the way in,” Rader said. “I often find that connections I made in my younger years have helped me along the way more often than not, and I'm able to strengthen those bonds further and have more people in my corner as the years go by.”

A strong résumé is another thing Rader stands behind. 

“I truly believe that a great resume is something that every person should possess,” Rader said. “Take the time to make yourself presentable on paper so that when you're able to land a big interview and further sell yourself for the role that you want, you can first prove yourself on paper because that's what's going to get in front of them.”

Rader’s past connections have certainly lent a major hand in her role today, and she sees bits and pieces of those experiences in her current position. 

“Something I love about my job is working for a family owned and operated company,” Rader said. “Most of my jobs have been with companies like that, and they truly live and breathe this business and lifestyle. No matter where I go, I’m representing a brand that already speaks volumes for itself.”

All of those jobs Rader has represented have, in return, invested in her. Every career path has played a part in the dream career she has now by bolstering certain skills, and those skills weren’t discovered overnight, but instead along the way.

“Take the time to discover what you're truly passionate about and hone in on that,” Rader said. “Sharpen your skills to match the career that you hope to one day obtain. I joke that I'm kind of a jack of all trades, but I have all of these skills because I spent years learning how to do all of these things and how to do them effectively.”

Looking ahead into the future, it can be intimidating to try and visualize where you’ll take the passions and knowledge you’ve harbored over the years and apply them to. You may have a degree and devotion to a certain industry, but no clear direction as to where you’ll go with those things once you graduate, and that’s okay. 

There is no textbook career path, and your agriculture journey will differ from every other person’s. 

There is no blueprint for success in agriculture – it’s something that has to be built individually. And although the task of pursuing success without a detailed plan can be daunting, it’s important to remember that some of the most successful people in agriculture, such as Sara Rader, didn’t have one either, and that some of the best experiences are those unplanned.