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Speaker Bios (Alphabetical)

Rick Anderson is the Strategic Planning Director for wafla. Previously Rick was on the Board of Directors for wafla. He has chaired both the Washington and American Farm Bureau Labor Committees, has served on the Washington Labor & Industries Worker’s Comp. Advisory Committee and the Employment Law Advisory Committee. He is a graduate of the WA Ag Forestry Leadership Program. In 2015 he retired as Corporate Administrator for a large farming and food processing operation. Rick was a commercial banker for many years, prior to that he was a college Farm Management Instructor and began his career as a high school vocational Ag teacher. He grew up on and currently owns the family farm in North Dakota.

Tim Bernasek is the Chair of Dunn Carney’s Agriculture, Food and Natural Resources team and the Government Relations team and serves on the firm’s Executive Committee, and a member of the Employment and Real Estate/Land Use teams. His practice focuses on a variety of legal matters including administrative law, real estate, agriculture and natural resources, employment, and business law. Tim developed the Farm Employers Education and Legal defense Service (FEELDS) with the Oregon Farm Bureau and serves as the provider attorney representing members on farm labor cases, including cases involving U.S. Department of Labor’s use of its ‘hot goods’ authority. Prior to joining Dunn Carney, Tim was the General Counsel for the Oregon Farm Bureau Federation. His job duties included managing corporate and contractual legal affairs for the Farm Bureau. Tim was a partner in the law firm of Hobson

& Bernasek, LLP before joining the Farm Bureau. Tim and his wife Poppy have a daughter Audrey and a son Thomas and live in Portland. In his spare time, Tim enjoys fly fishing, skiing, hiking, and swimming.

Raul Calvo is the owner of the consulting company Employer Services (ES) he started in 2009 based in Lockwood, California. ES provides management and leadership development, HR and employee relations training and consulting. With his 20 years of experience and vast knowledge in the agriculture industry, he teaches leaders the actionable tools that will positively change the culture of a company. ES mobilizes the management team to work with a shared vision and works with executives and leaders of all levels to help them become more effective.

Dan Fazio is an attorney and the director of wafla, a nonprofit trade association he founded in 2007 to serve labor-intensive seasonal employers. Prior to wafla, Dan was the Director of Employer Services at the Washington State Farm Bureau Federation, where he led a team that developed HR programs and advocated for farm employers concerning labor and employment issues at the state and federal level. Dan frequently speaks to employer groups concerning labor issues, immigration reform, and the rights of businesses in dealing with government agencies.

Kalen Fraser is the owner of The Labor Brain Inc., an HR consulting firm located in Wenatchee, WA. Kalen worked for several years as a federal investigator with the U.S. Department of Labor, Wage and Hour Division in Grand Junction and Denver, Colorado. She conducted investigations on hundreds of companies to determine their compliance with federal labor laws including the Fair Labor Standards Act, Davis-Bacon Act, Service Contract Act, Family Medical Leave Act and the H2A and H2B guest worker programs. She created The Labor Brain to respond to a growing need in the business community for expert guidance on how labor laws are enforced. The Labor Brain has conducted audits for companies as small as 50 employees and as large as 1,500 employees. Kalen frequently presents on a variety of compliance topics and her articles on labor law enforcement have been published in several business journals. She received her Bachelor’s degree from Northwestern University and served in the Peace Corps in Nicaragua as a teacher trainer prior to working as a federal investigator.

Speaker Bios Cont. (Alphabetical)

Robin W. Hansen is an associate with Jeffers, Danielson, Sonn & Aylward. A native of Wenatchee, Washington, she joined JDSA Law in 2014 after working as a summer associate with the firm. Robin completed her MBA and Juris Doctor (JD) degrees jointly at Willamette University. Her primary areas of practice include Business and Corporate Law, as well as working with Agriculture, Estate Planning, Real Estate Law, and Succession Planning. Robin’s pre-law background is in family business, as part of a family of generational orchardists and viticulturists in the Wenatchee Valley. She has a keen connection to the area and always planned to return after completing her degrees at University of Puget Sound, Tacoma, and Willamette University in Salem, Oregon. Robin is

an avid equestrian, enjoys water and snow skiing. She sees the Wenatchee Valley as a vibrant business and agricultural community and is determined to help it grow.

Karin Jones is a partner in the Labor and Employment group, at Stoel Rives LLP in Seattle providing practical advice to employers regarding a wide variety of workplace and personnel issues and helping employers minimize the risk and impact of workplace problems. When litigation arises, Karin represents employers before administrative agencies and the state and federal courts. Karin has experience representing employers in disputes involving discrimination, harassment, reasonable accommodation, employee family and medical leave, wage and hour claims, workplace safety (WISHA/OSHA), and whistleblower complaints, among other workplace issues. In addition to her trial court practice, Karin draws on her prior experience as a law clerk at the Ninth Circuit to successfully represent clients in appellate litigation. Karin also provides services such as employee and supervisor training, employee handbook reviews, and workplace audits to help ensure employers’ compliance with the many employment laws applicable to their organizations.

Rita Lovett joined JDSA in 2016 bringing more than sixteen years of legal experience to the firm. Rita splits her time between complex commercial transactions and assisting employers with day-today employment law compliance. In her transactional practice, Rita advises on entity formation and governance, and assists clients in managing risk while obtaining the goods and services they need for their operations. She counsels agricultural clients seeking to develop, finance, and manage their operations, including fruit tree orchardists and highly regulated cannabis producers and processors. In her employment law practice, Rita’s focus is preventative; she helps employers develop and maintain healthy relationships with their employees, allowing them to focus on the daily needs of

running their businesses. She advises on employment policies, employee and supervisor training, internal investigations, disability accommodations, family and medical leave, wage and hour issues, unlawful discrimination, and employee performance, discipline, and termination issues. Rita regularly drafts and reviews employee handbooks, and employment agreements. Where disputes arise despite best practices, Rita assists employers to efficiently resolve them. Rita and her family moved to Wenatchee from Alaska after falling in love with North Central Washington during their many visits to the area.

Brendan Monahan has a commercial litigation and trial practice that focuses on complex commercial litigation, labor and employment law, and agriculture law. He represents a wide range of clients, from individuals and small businesses to nationally recognized corporations. Brendan has litigated cases at all levels, from administrative hearings to arbitrations and jury trials to arguments before the Washington courts of appeals and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. He has handled cases in more than a dozen counties in Washington, as well as in a number of state and federal jurisdictions, including cases in New York, Oregon, Florida, Nevada, Texas and California. Brendan frequently serves as an arbitrator and mediates private disputes.

Speaker Bios Cont. (Alphabetical)

Lee Wicker has been growing Flue Cured tobacco with his family in Lee County, NC since 1978. After graduating from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1993, he worked for the North Carolina Employment Security Commission as the technical supervisor for farm employment programs and the statewide administrator for the H-2A program. In 1997, Lee was hired as Deputy Director of the North Carolina Growers Association (NCGA), which runs the largest H-2A program in the nation. His responsibilities at NCGA include federal government affairs, labor relations, regulatory advocacy, public policy development and analysis, member

services, political affairs, and grassroots programs for 700 growers across the state. Lee has learned about the unique challenges surrounding labor management and compliance on the farm from the ground level up to the highest levels in all three branches of the federal government. He has participated in the national public policy debate surrounding farm labor issues and has been actively involved in seeking legislative reforms from Congress for growers and farm workers under the H-2A program for the last 15 years. Lee is proud to be both a farmer and a farm worker.

Sarah Wixson is a shareholder with Stokes Lawrence Velikanje Moore & Shore law firm in Yakima and works with closely held private companies, particularly in agriculture, on complex employment litigation matters, including defense of Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and Department of Labor claims. Sarah attended Texas A & M University where she received her bachelor’s degree, and then she attended University of Idaho Law School. Sarah helped obtain a unanimous defense jury verdict for one of the largest apple growers in the United States in a multi-claimant class action brought by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Following a two-and-a-half week trial, a nine-member jury of women and men found that the government had failed to prove that any of the 14 individuals whose claims went to trial had experienced sexual harassment or a hostile work environment. Earlier in the case, the court dismissed summary judgment claims brought on behalf of 11 additional claimants.

Brad Worthley is an accomplished business consultant with over 42 years of management experience. He is also an internationally acclaimed leadership, customer service and motivational expert who has trained hundreds of thousands of people in a wide range of industries throughout the world since 1991. He has authored four books and produced numerous training videos and audio programs with experts such as Zig Ziglar, Jim Rohn, Brian Tracy, John Maxwell and others. Brad is always the highest rated speaker at any event in which he presents at and is best known for his signature session titled "Exceeding Customer Expectations" which is the title of his first book. This session was voted as one of the top two keynotes in the world.

George J. Zanatta is the COO of wafla and has made a career of understanding and making businesses work! With more than 35 years of working experience in diverse fields, he has acquired a unique perspective on what makes a successful business. As a public speaker and Business Development Coach, George has helped many companies achieve their goals and create a business culture to guide them through the challenges of their fields. As a certified Life Coach, by the Robbins-Madanes Center, and a Master Graduate from Rapport Leadership International, he has trained with some of the best people in the world and has received certifications from several leadership training programs.

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