On October 16, 2026, Maine FFA member, Jillian McLaughlin will travel to Indianapolis, Indiana, to represent Maine in the National FFA Officer selection process. As Maine’s 2026–2027 National Officer Candidate, Jillian will be interviewing with the National Officer Nominating Committee for her place on the National FFA Officer Team, a group of six leaders from across the country that represent more than one million FFA members.  

From helping establish an FFA chapter at Lincoln Academy to serving as the 2025-2026 Maine FFA State Reporter, Jillian has continued to seek opportunities to challenge herself, learn more about the agricultural industry, and get to know the members she will serve in this role. 

For Maine, this is a significant moment; this opportunity provides Jillian a platform to bring a New England perspective and voice to states with smaller membership that have been underrepresented in recent years. 

Before she heads to Indianapolis, we sat down with Jillian to learn more about her journey, how she is preparing, and what it would mean to represent FFA members across the country.

It has been a long time since Maine and New England have had a National Officer. What does that mean to you?

So, this might come as a shock, but it’s been a good seventy years since the state of Maine has had a national officer.  Through some conversations with friends in New Hampshire, I know it’s been over sixty years since they’ve had a national officer.

I think that going into this process, I’m in a unique position to give a voice to a group of students that I don’t necessarily feel they are getting the recognition they deserve.

When peope think of traditional FFA or production agriculture, they’re thinking about our big Midwest states, they’re thinking about our big Southern states, they’re looking all the way out to California, because they’re thinking in terms of membership, which is completely valid. Whenever you think about the scale of an organization, you’re obviously going to pay more attention to the hubs where there’s a lot of membership.However, when you look at the state of Maine, we were one of the top states in percentage growth and that is something to be celebrated! .

And so, one thing I’ve seen in my travels as a state officer, as a member, and honestly, throughout this whole national officer candidate process is the excitement and the energy in Maine FFA and New England students is the same, if not more, than some of the energy and excitement that I have seen from some of our big states’ members.  And I think that’s really exciting and deserves to be recognized.

We’ve got kids doing crazy stuff. We’ve got members at Tri-County Tech Center that have partnerships with UMaine Fort Kent and are actually doing their SAE projects in the logging industry.

We’ve got students at my home chapter at Lincoln Academy who are using that platform to promote their aquaculture businesses as lobstermen.

There’s just so much diversity of experience happening in New England, specifically in the state of Maine. Throughout this process, I’ve been blessed with a chance to really engage with others about those opportunities and to share the voices and stories of those students.

How have your experiences influenced the way you think about agricultural education and FFA?

I think that my personal experiences have only made me more passionate about ag education and agriculture as a whole, because throughout my time, both in the Blue Jacket and outside of it, having moved states, changed schools, been in a lot of new environments, I’ve been really exposed to the fact that there is a lack of ag education and ag education resources currently happening in our school systems.

And so, having had the opportunity as a state officer in the 2025-2026 school year to travel around and actually meet in a lot of the schools throughout our state of Maine, hearing from students how they didn’t really know about FFA very much until they had a conversation with somebody else that did or saw it on it on social media.

 I’ve had students come to me during one of my school visits in particular who were like, “You know, this seems really cool, but I have nothing to do with ag. I don’t have a farm. I’m not actively involved in the industry, but I don’t know if that’s for me.”

And I think that that’s one of the biggest misconceptions that I’ve learned out on the road, and I personally attribute that to a lack of ag education and ag ed resources.

I think the more that we can push general agriculture education knowledge, just for the benefits of people knowing where their food’s coming from, what’s healthy for them, how they can get involved if they’re seeing problems, is where we’re going to start to see that shift.

And in turn, we’ll begin to see a rise in students flooding towards CTSO (Career and Technical Student Organizations) and Youth programs and such as FFA, 4-H, SkillsUSA, and others.

What sets you apart from other National Officer candidates?

Aside from the red hair, I think that something that sets me apart is my experience!

Throughout this organization, I think many of our students take for granted that they’ve grown up in a pre-established chapter with solid leadership and a strong foundation within their school systems. And that’s not something that I have always had.

That’s how I started. I was a member of Staunton FFA here in Illinois. We have been a national five-star gold chapter for the past six years. We’re nationally recognized for our leadership abilities and for our advisors. And I was blessed to be part of such a strong program.

However, when I moved to Maine in ’23 at the age of 16 by myself, that was completely taken from me. Everything. The members that I was friends with, the foundation of the organization that I grew up around, and the leadership I had from my ag teachers were 1,400 miles away in the Midwest. And I essentially had to combine everything I had learned from my friends, my peers, and my ag teachers, and create a giant mix of all of that to lay that foundation in a new environment.

I think that’s something a lot of people don’t necessarily recognize, because the traditional route is that you just join FFA whenever you get to high school as a freshman, and this is just an organization you’re a part of. And that’s just not something that I had in Maine.

I offer a unique perspective on what it truly means to be a member and a leader within the organization.  Because as a senior in high school, I was balancing a full course load. I was still living across the country by myself. I was managing being a member of other organizations, I was on our student council, I was the captain of the debate team, and I had a lot of other things happening.

But I was also taking on facilitating classes and serving as a FFA student advisor. I was managing 12-plus student-led projects through AET (Agriculture Experience Tracker), which is our SAE, Supervised Agricultural Experience, Record Book Network, and all the while still trying to be a daughter, a granddaughter, a friend, a co-worker.

I was wearing a lot of hats at that time, and I think that that’s a perspective that a lot of my fellow candidates don’t have, simply due to their life experiences.

And so, I think I’ll be able to reach some members maybe on a bit more of a personal level, in terms of those experiences.

You mentioned that you helped establish the FFA chapter at Lincoln Academy. What did that experience teach you about leadership?

I think my biggest takeaway on a more personal level was that success doesn’t necessarily have to happen overnight.

When I first moved to the area from an established FFA chapter, I had a meeting with the school administration, where they completely shut my idea down. They were like, well, we are a private boarding school on the Midcoast of Maine; production ag isn’t really our thing, so we’re not sure how having this organization on campus would serve our students.

Which is a completely fair concern. Any administration would be hesitant to introduce something new to the school without fully weighing its potential benefits to students, especially when it requires time, energy, and money.

And so, I took that very personally and got pretty upset about it. I was like, man, this is an organization that has meant so much to me over the last couple of years, and they don’t even want it here.

And so, rather than just dwelling on that, I was almost able to teach myself to use it as motivation and was like, instead of saying no right now, how about you wait two weeks and then tell me no again in a different meeting?

And in those two weeks, I just kind of prepared myself. I was like, okay, these are the concerns that were raised. How can I address these the next time we speak?

When those two weeks rolled around, I brought some students in with me who said that they would really like this to happen. I brought a couple of staff members in with me who said they’d be willing to serve as our sort of faculty advisor, if you will.

And I think the conversation was a little more productive the second time, having addressed some concerns and provided a bit more information to educate those in the room who were unfamiliar with FFA.

And now it’s been established for roughly three years. I’ve been hands-off of it for about one and a half years, going on two years now, and it’s only growing, so that’s super exciting.

You’ve been on the road quite a bit with industry tours, National Officer Candidate (NOC) training, and classroom visits.  What is your go-to road trip snack?

Well, this is such a good one—I love this question.

Anybody on my state staff, any of my friends, or family will tell you that I am like the queen of truck stops. I genuinely will plan my drive around the closest Buc-ee’s.

So, when I walk into a truck stop, I’ve got to make myself a large Diet Dr. Pepper. The first step is right there.

And then my sweet treat is typically Nerds Gummy Clusters. I like those quite a bit.

And then if I’m going to get like a salty snack, you’ve got to hear me out on this one: the Miss Vickie’s kettle-cooked salt and vinegar chips.

Go-to road snacks right there.

Finally, what are you most looking forward to if selected as a National Officer for the 2026-2027 year?

The thing I am most looking forward to if selected is establishing meaningful connections with others across agriculture. As a national officer, we are in a position which requires us to travel across the country and interact with hundreds of thousands of people all from different backgrounds, cultures, and sectors of agriculture. I am excited by the opportunity to learn from students who are passionate about being the next generation of agricultural leaders, industry professionals who are committed to the future of food production and security, and those in positions of power in our nation’s capital who have the ability to grow agricultural education nationwide. It is through these engagements and conversations that I feel I will truly be able to represent the emblem on my back and those who have made this journey possible. 

To learn more about Maine FFA, visit the Maine DOE website or the Maine FFA Association’s website, or reach out to Maine DOE Natural Resource Specialist and FFA Liaison Emily Doughty at emily.doughty@maine.gov.