Katy Jane Seaton wears many hats – mother, farm wife, advocate and business woman – just to name a few. Seaton has spent 17 years in the wine industry, 14 of those in Texas advocating for wine growers and eventually becoming one herself. She now owns Farmhouse Vineyards in Meadow, Texas, with her husband, along with his sister and brother-in-law. When she is not managing her business, Seaton travels the state and the nation to fight for winegrowers’ rights and for their place in agriculture.

In 1971, the American Economic Association started a committee dedicated to tracking the number of women in the economics profession. Despite the committee’s hope of seeing the relatively low representation of women in economics increase over the years, a 2016 report from AEA suggested little progress had been made. However, the Department of Agricultural and Applied Economics at Texas Tech is changing that stat.