WASHINGTON – The North American Meat Institute (NAMI) announced the successor for President and CEO Barry Carpenter. Julie Anna Potts will take over the role effective Sept. 24. Carpenter announced his retirement last December.

Potts has served as executive vice president and treasurer of the American Farm Bureau Federation (AFBF) since 2011. She first joined AFBF in 2004 as general counsel. She maintained that role until 2009 when she was named chief counsel of the Senate Agriculture Committee, serving under then-Chairman Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas.

“Julie Anna Potts’ deep legal, legislative and association experience and her passion for agriculture will serve the Institute and its members well as we embark on the next chapter in our Institute’s history,” said Meat Institute Chair John Vatri, vice president of operations at Cardinal Meat Specialists Ltd. “We look forward to having her join our historic Institute and our meat industry family and we are confident that her skills and experience will help us continue to serve our members’ needs.”

Potts also served as an associate in the environmental law groups of the law firms Mayer Brown LLP, and Sonnenschein, Nath & Rosenthal in Washington, DC, earlier in her career. In addition, she clerked for US Magistrate Judge John M. Facciola in the US District Court for the District of Columbia from 1997-1998.

She earned her law degree at The George Washington Univ. Law School and her Bachelor of Arts in English at Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania. She is a trustee of The Pennsylvania State Univ. and chair of the American Enterprise Agriculture Sector Committee at the Smithsonian American History Museum.

Carpenter began his career leading trade associations in 2007, after a 37-year career leading the US Dept. of Agriculture’s Agricultural Marketing Service’s Livestock and Seed Division. He served as CEO of the National Meat Association (NMA) beginning in 2007 and was named CEO of the North American Meat Association (NAMA) in 2013, after NMA merged with the North American Meat Processors Association (NAMP). Carpenter then was named president and CEO of NAMI in 2015, which was the result of the merger of the American Meat Institute and NAMA.