Below are Ms. Acord’s answers:
Lending an understanding ear and advice to ranchers, whether just starting out or well established. It takes one to know one and being a rancher myself puts me in the trenches along with my customers. I not only understand the ups and downs, but I live them along with my customers.
Tough cattle prices, fire, drought, floods can all have a huge impact on my customers. Other problems are land prices and interest rates. All but floods have been a problem in recent years. For both land and cattle, it’s been a great few years to sell but if someone is looking to buy in on land or cattle, the prices and interest rates are prohibitive.
Personally, being a women in agriculture still has it’s roadblocks or detours. I have some older male customers that do not want to work with a woman, but their sons do not have that same issue. It is a fading problem, thankfully, but still one I have run across.
In college I started banking as a part time teller since they were very flexible with my school schedule. At that same bank I took a second position as a night auditor, a position that processes all the transaction from that day. When I was about to graduate with a bachelor’s degree in Agriculture Business, the economy took a nose dive. I added an extra year to my college career and received a second bachelor’s degree, this time in Accounting. Those two degrees helped me into a job as an internal bank auditor for two and a half years. Moving back to my hometown had me reverse a bit in order to get a job and I moved into a teller position. Within six weeks I had become a credit analyst for my region, then for the entire state under that bank. I switched banks in April 2020 and here I am!
Being an ag banker means working on ag hours. I have customers call at 6am, before they go outside and late in the evening, when they’re in for the day. It’s being exhausted during calving season but still being there for my customers who are just as tired. Living the same life as them, with an added layer of being the banker. It’s also turning people down sometimes because I don’t want to be the one to have to come get their cows or foreclose on their ranch.
No degree is REQUIRED as most of the technical aspects can be taught on the job but an agriculture business and/or accounting degree is a huge plus. The most important factor in my job is your ability to communicate and talk to people. That’s a skill that can get you into almost any profession and be successful.
Issued in furtherance of extension work, acts of May 8 and June 30, 1914, in cooperation with the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Mandy Marney, Director, University of Wyoming Extension, College of Agriculture, Life Sciences and Natural Resources, University of Wyoming Extension, University of Wyoming, Laramie, Wyoming 82071.
The University of Wyoming is an equal opportunity/affirmative action institution.
© 2025 Wyoming 4-H. All rights reserved.
Amber Armajo
University of Wyoming Extension 4-H/Youth Educator – Washakie County
Phone: (307) 347-3431
Email: amwall@uwyo.edu
PO Box 609
1200 Culbertson Ave, Suite G
Worland, WY 82401
Amber Armajo
University of Wyoming Extension 4-H/Youth Educator – Washakie County
Phone: (307) 347-3431
Email: amwall@uwyo.edu
PO Box 609
1200 Culbertson Ave, Suite G
Worland, WY 82401
© 2023 Wyoming 4-H
