Sept. 3, 2024

This week’s Up-and-Comer is Sienna Mayer, program manager – autonomy at Raven Industries, a brand of CNH.

Name: Sienna Mayer

Age: 28

Hometown: Manchester, New Hampshire

What brought you to Sioux Falls?

Previously, I was a field service engineer based in Fargo, North Dakota. One of my main accounts was in Sioux Falls, so I spent a lot of my time living here out of hotel rooms. During this time, I met my partner and eventually decided it made the most sense for me to officially move to Sioux Falls since it was where much of my life was.

What keeps you in Sioux Falls?

The community – it’s what I fell in love with about Sioux Falls and why I’ve chosen to stay.

What’s your favorite thing about your job?

One of my favorite things about my work is that it mixes my technical background with my family’s agriculture roots. My family is originally from a rural farm community in North Dakota, so growing up, I used to help my relatives on their farms but never saw that being my career. I was always a nerd and loved engineering, so when I moved to Sioux Falls and found Raven, it was a perfect fit for me since it allowed me to use my technical skills within agriculture. I feel proud to be a part of my family’s legacy and history in agriculture in my own nerdy way, and I love the work that I do because every day I am using technology to help solve challenges farmers face.

How did you get connected to your industry?

After moving to Sioux Falls, I started looking for a new role, with my No. 1 priority being finding a company whose values aligned with my own. Raven stood out immediately. The company’s motto of ‘helping farmers serve the world’ and the ways in which they were using technology to help make agriculture more sustainable for producers and our planet really resonated with me. Learning more about the company and getting a taste of the culture during the interview process reinforced that this company and industry was where I belonged.

Describe your workplace in three words.

Innovative, meaningful, balanced.

What is something someone might be surprised to learn about you?

I moved to the Midwest via Mexico and was living in Mexico City to study Spanish before settling in the Dakotas.

What’s your favorite way to give back to your community?

Volunteering and being active in building the type of community I want to be a part of. Early on after moving to Sioux Falls, I started participating in local events such as the river cleanups and began volunteering with nonprofits like Project Food Forest and Building Sustainable Connections. Some of those relationships turned into opportunities for board membership, where I get to play a larger role in helping foster a sustainable, thriving community. My partner and I are also a Friendship Family for international students going to college in Sioux Falls. So we build relationships and spend time with our student throughout the year and get to act as a support network for them. Ultimately, we hope that it helps them feel welcomed to our community.

What’s one business you’d like to see in Sioux Falls that isn’t here now?

I would love it if more artists had concerts in Sioux Falls. It feels like Minneapolis or Omaha are the closest places with venues that have artists touring year-round, and I would love to see more of that here.

If you had $1 million to start a business, what kind of business would it be?

Some type of greenhouse or urban agriculture farm so that I could spend my days playing in the dirt caring for nature.