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Spotlight on Andrew Joannides, Executive Director
Can you share a bit about your background and career path—what led you to become Executive Director of Wyoming Agriculture in the Classroom?
The importance of youth education in Wyoming is what ultimately brought me home and into my current role. When a former college roommate told me about Wyoming Agriculture in the Classroom, I realized how much I had never been taught growing up — about natural resources, e.g., trona, predator management, and so much more. I knew immediately this was the right fit. I HAD to do my part to change children’s academic focus, if I could.
I am a proud first-generation native Wyomingite. I was born and raised in Cheyenne and went to the University of Wyoming (UW) for my undergraduate degree. In college, my first internship was with UW in athletics, and a former boss and mentor asked me “why don’t you come over and work with me where the money is at?” – I assumed I was going to get paid more. Silly me... What he really meant was come work in fundraising. Philanthropy has always been a big part of my family, and I learned a lot about it from my parents who had been involved in numerous philanthropic efforts in Laramie County. So, fundraising wasn’t new to me, and I understood the premise of it. Athletics was my passion as I grew up in a strong athletic environment in Cheyenne where there was a robust youth sports program. From there forward, I chased the athletic administration dream and wanted to be an Athletic Director.
After my internship stint with the Cowboy Joe Club, I took off for an entry level job at University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV) where I cut my teeth in learning how to run an athletic development shop. I then followed my boss at the time to the University of Tennessee (UT) at Martin where I oversaw a fundraising office and had my first managerial role. There, I was told that “the most important job I would ever have is managing people.” To this day I hold that near and dear as I firmly believe that people make an organization.
After UT Martin, I returned West to join a fellow Wyomingite at Arizona State University, where I gained experience in a major fundraising operation with a more siloed fundraising environment. I quickly realized that environment wasn’t for me, and within a year I was offered my first department head role. Achieving my goal of becoming a department head before 30, I accepted an Assistant Athletic Director position at Northern Illinois University (NIU). With deep family roots in Illinois, it was fun to be near relatives in a place I grew up visiting. Over the next four years, NIU shaped me as a manager, leader, and fundraiser, as I oversaw a record-setting team supporting one of the nation’s top Division I football programs while traveling widely and growing personally and professionally.
However, once Covid hit, I immediately left Illinois and came home. It was there that I found myself fixing fence and spending the spring months in Cheyenne outdoors. I missed home. The start of 2021 was a new chapter for me when I headed south to Texas to work at Tarleton State University for their university advancement and raised money for the College of Agriculture and the Rodeo team. I was locked into my roots and was ready to come home. However, back in Wyoming, my mom was sick at the time and I needed to come home.
After a year, I found a role where I could stay in the nonprofit world while working in an educational setting that would dabble in agriculture. Today, I’m grateful to be sitting in the Executive Director chair, coming up on year three.
What inspired you to dedicate your career to agricultural and natural resource education in Wyoming?
It's a mix of passion and purpose. First and foremost, I want kids to learn things I didn’t learn until I was in my 20s or older, as this will inform their sense of responsibility to this state and its economy. I didn’t grow up in ag, or any of Wyoming’s other core heritage industries, but that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t know what our state provides and what pays the bills in this great state.
Also, I love agriculture. If I could go back, I would have pursued a ranch management degree or something similar. Supporting our producers is incredibly important to me to keep our state's heritage alive and to preserve the values of environmental stewardship that started in agriculture.
In my free time I help friends with ranch work, and I try to involve myself in as many opportunities as possible. All it took was my buddy in Texas who needed help keeping his string of seven horses rode after work and taking care of his cattle to awaken my passion.
What personal experiences have shaped your leadership style and your commitment to this organization’s mission?
I've worked with great leaders, but I've also encountered poor leadership styles. A few key experiences stand out to me. This has given me an opportunity to build my own and evolve it into something that works for me and WAIC.
A quote that stands out to me is, “leadership is lonely.” I agree and disagree. At times, leadership does feel isolating — making difficult decisions that affect people or the organization can be stressful and solitary. But it doesn’t have to be. By consulting trusted advisors, seeking feedback, and involving staff, those lonely moments can become more collaborative. While not every situation allows for this, many do.
Another experience that comes to mind is the budget impasse that I experienced at NIU. From July 1, 2015, to August 31, 2017, the State of Illinois received "stop gap funding" instead of state appropriations. NIU lost 70% of state funds needed for maintaining operations and services in 2016. It was detrimental to our athletic department and university. Instead of fundraising for our student-athletes, we also had to fundraise for staff salaries. That was a tough bullet to bite, but I learned a lot in those lean years of zero-based budgets and how to raise money creatively. That was an absolute crash course in administrative leadership and communication.
Lastly, my father taught me two things that I took with me everywhere: treat the janitor the same way you would treat your boss, and the only people that like change are babies. I always treated everyone I worked with the same amount of respect and that has always paid dividends on relationships. Once you have the self-awareness in understanding how difficult change is and can be to some people, you communicate differently and more strategically. Transparency is key.
How do you see Wyoming Agriculture in the Classroom evolving over the next five to ten years, and what is your vision for its future impact?
I envision WAIC to evolve many times over the next decade as education evolves annually these days. WAIC must stay up to speed with how fast education moves. With that said, there are two pillars that WAIC must always be on the forefront of: education and funding. As we move towards 2030, we just released a Strategic Plan earlier this year that has guiding points to not only keep WAIC on track, but to help position ourselves for the future. I encourage you to check it out if you haven’t done so yet. You can view it here.
Academically, WAIC is in the process of revamping and updating our Wyo Wonders curriculum. You may remember a rebrand that we completed in August of 2023 from the Wyoming Stewardship Project to Wyo Wonders. That project was design only. Our education team is currently working on updating the Agriculture units and upon completion, we will begin updating the Minerals & Energy (M&E) units and the Outdoor Recreation & Tourism (ORT) units. We have already collaborated with the School of Energy Resources (SER) at UW and the Haub School of Environment and Natural Resources at UW to assist us with updating our M&E and ORT lessons. We are incredibly grateful for their collaboration and dedication to assisting us. It is critical that we do this as our units have not been updated since the curriculum’s inception in 2019. Educational curriculum should be updated every 5-7 years, and we are commited to that task. I am fired up to see this completed and am proud of the work that has been done already but also of the work to come to maintain the integrity of Wyo Wonders.
With this task it is of the utmost importance to continue to increase our classroom usage of Wyo Wonders. We set a record in school year 2023-24 by surpassing 200 classrooms and ending with 206. In school year 2024-25, we had a setback with only 188 classrooms reporting having used Wyo Wonders. We have accounted for all educators who did not teach our curriculum and accredit it to a high level of transition due to retirement, job changes, etc. As frustrating as that is for us, we are thrilled that we have finally accomplished a long-standing goal of getting Wyo Wonders into all 23 counties. We finally got Weston County on board, and we are now 23 of 23. We also had 32% growth in new educators teaching Wyo Wonders. We have a lot of work to do in retaining and growing the usage around this great state and we are off to a good start this school year. We are optimistic.
Additionally, it is key to me that the statistics we report truly reflect accurate utilization of the materials. Integrity of data, tracking, and reporting is critical. Further, at WAIC, we aim to develop long-term relationships with teachers, so they will use Wyo Wonders lessons year-over-year. 72% of teachers use this material repeatedly.
Financially, WAIC is incredibly healthy due to the foresight and knowledge of those before me. I spent much of 2024 completing the investments from our prior fundraising campaign, Wyoming’s Students, Wyoming’s Future. Thankfully, we have a vast amount of support from folks like yourself who care deeply about Wyoming and natural resource education. However, long-term sustainability is on my mind every day. My dream is to invest enough money that would underwrite half of our budget in perpetuity. That would mean less stress in the already tough philanthropic market that Wyoming is, and more focus on academic growth and maintenance. We cannot operate without your support.
As a non-profit we are mindful of where the dollars come from, how they were earned, and how they are spent. My hope is that you are proud of what we provide to educators and the youth in Wyoming and trust us to be stewards of your gift. I ask that you continue to support us to the best of your ability whether it’s financially or in your community to share our curriculum. It truly takes a village and WAIC needs your help.
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