Karisha Devlin, North Region devlink@missouri.edu Karisha, a Mississippi native, is an Agri-business Specialist for Shelby County and the northeast region. Karisha has been working closing with the Mississippi Valley Processors who are in the planning stage of processing soybeans into soybean meal, biodiesel and vegetable oil. Karisha has also been a participant in the Agricultural Business Counselor Scholar Program.
	Mary Sobba, Central Regional sobbam@missouri.edu Mary, a Kansas native, is an Agri-business Specialist and County Program Director for Audrain County and the central Missouri region. Mary is working with the East Central Ag Products (ECAP). ECAP is in the process of creating a 30 million gallon per year ethanol plant.
	Van Ayers, Southeast Regional ayersv@missouri.edu Van, a Tennessee native, is an Agriculture and Rural Development Specialist for Stoddard County and the Bootheel area. Van has also been a participant in the Agricultural Business Counselor Scholar Program and Missouri Institute for Cooperatives. He organized the Southeast Missouri Entrepreneurial Agriculture Conference and the Southeast Missouri AgriTouism Conference over the last several years. He has spoken on value added programs in various states. He has worked on projects with crawfish and freshwater shrimp producers, a vegetable producer group, a waterfowl group, an ethanol cooperative and the Missouri Rice Producers. He has assisted these groups and others in obtaining funds including state and federal sustainable agriculture grants. He currently serves on the board of Delta Land and Community.
	Wayne Prewitt, West Central Regional prewittw@missouri.edu Wayne, a Missouri native, is an Agri-Business Specialist for Vernon County who will be joining the Missouri Value Added Center in 2005. He will be the Regional Agricultural Business Counselor for the West Central region. Wayne has previously worked on various Value Added projects. One major project that Wayne worked on was the Missouri Pecan Processing plant. Wayne worked with a group of pecan growers to help them market certified organic pecans.

Dr. Joe Parcell, Director parcellj@missouri.edu Joe, an Iowa Native, is an Associate Professor in the Department of Agricultural Economics at the University of Missouri-Columbia. He has served in the role of director or co-director of the value added program for the past four years. He has been involved with the Missouri Show-Me-Select Replacement Heifer, Inc., provided market opportunity opinions for projects related to beef, pork, renewable fuels, nuts, vegetables, industrial products, and food products. Joe is a graduate of the Graduate Institute of Cooperative Learning. He has served as state and federal reviewer for the USDA producer value added grant program, and he has reviewed and been a panel member for SBIR proposals. Joe also serves the linkage between applied value added related research and policy by responding to opinion leader inquires and testifying before state legislators.

Jill Fleischmann, Program Coordinator fleischmannj@missouri.edu Jill, a Missouri native, joined the Missouri Value Added Development Center in June, 2007 as the Value Added Program Coordinator. She has the role for coordinating communications for the Center and the Regional Agricultural Business Counselors in event planning, activity promotions, and assimilation of impact information.