Jackie Cascio likes to say she has chicken running through her veins. Her grandfather owned Wadman’s Poultry in Connecticut and was one of Perdue Farms’ first customers. Her father, Jack, then took over the family business. Jackie spent days alongside her dad, sitting in the trucks to deliver chicken to customers or doing bookwork.

Jackie has been with Perdue Farms for close to 25 years. One week after graduating from the University of Delaware College of Agriculture and Natural Resources in 2001 with a B.S. in Food and Agribusiness Management, she moved to Salisbury, Maryland, to start her career with Perdue in the customer service department. After a few years of learning the basics of retail sales, she was given the opportunity to move into outside sales, first calling on smaller accounts in Pennsylvania. If you were to ask her younger self, Jackie never imagined a career in sales. Her career grew in responsibility, calling on larger accounts and managing teams.

As part of her development, she moved into a corporate Trade Marketing Role, allowing her to understand more parts of the business while gaining a deeper understanding of the decision-making process and the "whys". While the role provided valuable insight, Jackie’s passion for sales — particularly customer relationships and business growth — ultimately led her back to the commercial side of the business.

Today, Jackie serves as Vice President of Grocery Specialty Sales, leading a high-performing team that manages strategic accounts such as Aldi, Butcher Box, Dollar General, Sprouts, Trader Joe’s and Whole Foods. Her keys to success: Strong relationships at every level, building trust through transparency, embracing change, and having a people-first leadership mindset.

Dr. Rebekah Kading is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Microbiology, Immunology, and Pathology at Colorado State University. Rebekah obtained her B.S. in Entomology with a concentration in Wildlife Conservation from the University of Delaware in 2000.

While at UD, Rebekah conducted undergraduate research on the wood thrush with Dr. Roland Roth and nurtured her growing interest in mosquitoes and vector-borne diseases. She worked as a seasonal employee for two summers for the Mosquito Control Section of the Delaware Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control. The job led her to appreciate the global significance of mosquito-borne diseases and One Health (interconnected human-animal-environmental health).

She went on to obtain her M.S. in Entomology from the University of Arkansas and Ph.D. from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Her Ph.D. research focused on malaria transmission dynamics in southern Zambia and ignited a passion for work that would have a positive health impact in Africa. Following graduation, Rebekah worked for the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Arbovirus Diseases Branch, where she led studies on mosquito blood-feeding behavior and West Nile virus ecology in Colorado and Guatemala, Rift Valley fever virus transmission by mosquitoes, and bat-associated viruses in Uganda.

Currently, Dr. Kading's diverse research program at Colorado State University continues to have a significant global footprint in studying the ecology and transmission of vector-borne and zoonotic viruses within a One Health framework. Her research spans the viral ecology of bats in Uganda, the arbovirus ecology in Myanmar, and the Rift Valley fever virus in Tanzania. She founded Musoke International in 2016, a charity that supports the education of orphaned children in Uganda. Rebekah plays the violin and is a proud mom to sons Jonah, Jasper, and Jett.