If you’ve been milking cows long enough, you know that resilience isn’t just a buzzword — it’s survival. It’s looking at a 12% tariff charge that’s never been on your bill before and figuring out how to keep going. It’s watching fuel costs climb and consolidation accelerate while still believing that tomorrow can be better than today.
That’s the reality Dairy Management Inc. (DMI) board chair Marilyn Hershey acknowledged at the organization’s recent annual meeting in Orlando, Fla., where the dairy checkoff marked both an ending and a beginning. After 25 years with DMI — the last five as CEO — Barbara O’Brien is stepping aside, handing leadership to Corey Scott on what will be remembered as one of the most consequential transitions in the organization’s history.
But this isn’t a story about retirement. It’s a story about what happens when an industry stops defending itself and starts proving its value — in laboratories, in restaurants, in export markets and in the daily lives of consumers who increasingly see food as medicine.
The Consistent Choice Who Refused Complacency
When O’Brien took the CEO role in 2021, she came with two decades of institutional knowledge and a reputation for getting things done. She was, as she put it, “a consistent choice” — but not a complacent one.
“No status quo,” she told farmers five years ago. “We would modernize dairy checkoff. We would focus the dollars where we knew they could have the greatest impact and we would keep pace with the amazing and accelerating changes we see happening on farm, in plant and in the marketplace.”
What followed wasn’t one defining moment but a series of strategic pivots that fundamentally changed how dairy checkoff operates — and what it can accomplish for the farmers who fund it.
Five Strategic Shifts That Changed Everything
1. Organizational Focus: Choosing What Matters Most
O’Brien’s first challenge was mental: stop thinking about pieces of checkoff and start thinking about the whole system. With national, state, regional and global organizations all working with their own boards and budgets, there was plenty of activity. The question was whether all that activity added up to impact.
In 2022, DMI launched cross-functional “strategic sprints” to answer three questions: Where can we have the greatest impact? Where should we invest more? And critically — what should we stop doing?
The result was ASPIRE, an acronym that gave the organization a uniform way to align business plans and make hard choices about resource allocation.
“There is never a shortage of good ideas,” O’Brien explains. “The question has always been, which of those ideas deserve your resources.”
That discipline matters more now than ever. Every dollar invested in one area means another receives less. As opportunities grow larger, choices become more consequential.
2. Health Science: From Defending Dairy to Demonstrating Value
For decades, dairy’s nutrition story centered on calcium, protein, vitamins and minerals — fundamentals that remain important. But after COVID-19, consumers started asking food to do more. They wanted energy, recovery, better aging, improved digestion and better sleep.
Dairy had answers, but it needed evidence.
“Those questions created an enormous opportunity to move from defending dairy to demonstrating with evidence how dairy foods contribute to people’s well-being,” O’Brien says.
DMI chose to lead with science, launching collaborations that would have seemed impossible years earlier. The partnership with Mayo Clinic, which began in 2021, wasn’t about slapping a prestigious name on dairy marketing. It was about leveraging Mayo’s credibility to ask better questions, generate stronger evidence and translate findings with greater authority.
The Milk Molecule Initiative pushed even deeper, examining bioactive components in milk that could unlock new benefits and applications — work that moves from laboratory to marketplace to policy.
The payoff? Dairy is increasingly recognized as a practical health and wellness solution. Full-fat dairy is gaining acceptance. Whole and 2% milk are back in schools. Science is creating conditions for innovation, access and demand.
“Science can do what marketing alone cannot,” O’Brien emphasizes. “It can change what we know, what we produce, the claims we make and the conversations we have with health professionals, customers and consumers.”
3. Innovation: Proving Milk’s Value Isn’t Fixed
Fairlife predated O’Brien’s CEO tenure, and the investment was controversial at the time. But she watched it change what the industry — and the public — believed milk could be.
By using ultrafiltration and extended shelf life processing, Fairlife made milk’s inherent benefits more visible and relevant. Consumers responded by paying more for benefits they could see and use: high protein, low sugar, convenient packaging and longer freshness.
The impact rippled far beyond one brand. Value-added and enhanced milk — including organic, high-protein, lactose-free and A2 offerings — now represents 17% of the fluid milk category.
“Fairlife helped stabilize and re-energize fluid milk by creating a new lane, not replacing traditional milk but expanding the definition of milk,” O’Brien says.
The lesson? Innovation that creates meaningful value for consumers creates meaningful value for dairy farmers.
Checkoff’s role isn’t to create every product or build every brand — it’s to create conditions for innovation by bringing science to customers, consumer insights to developers and the right partners together around marketplace needs.
4. Exports: Building a Bigger Customer for Your Milk
This isn’t just an export story — it’s a demand story, a farmer story.
Over the last five years, domestic demand grew 9%. But U.S. dairy exports grew faster than all other major players combined, capturing market share and becoming more innovative and diversified.
The numbers tell the story:
- Exports set record highs for volume and value in 2022
- 18% of U.S. milk production now moves into international markets
- U.S. cheese exports surpassed 1 billion lb. in 2024
- Export value reached $9.6 billion in 2025, with records in cheese, butterfat and high-protein whey
“More opportunities to move more milk,” O’Brien says. “Every new customer, every new use, every higher-value product gives U.S. dairy a bigger place in the global market and gives farmers more opportunities at home.”
That growth requires market knowledge, customer relationships, culinary and technical expertise, trade relationships — and most importantly — showing up in market, which U.S. Dairy Export Council does consistently.
5. Partnerships: Turning Capabilities Into Repeatable Growth
Checkoff doesn’t have to own the restaurant, the brand or the manufacturing plant. It creates value by helping partners solve problems, meet customer needs and open new markets.
The Domino’s and Taco Bell partnerships proved the model: work inside their business, understand their customers and operations, bring dairy science and culinary expertise, fill resource gaps, co-invest to get ideas to market faster.
Then replicate it.
Today, that model extends across categories:
- Pizza remains a powerful cheese vehicle
- Mexican food moved dairy from topping to center-of-plate
- Coffee and beverages created new occasions for milk, cream, cold foam and protein drinks
- Desserts, chicken, sauces and dips continue opening doors
The result is a more diversified demand portfolio, less dependent on any single company, product or occasion — better positioning for compounded growth.
The Innovation Center for U.S. Dairy operates on the same principle: bringing the industry together around shared opportunities and risks that no individual organization could tackle alone.
“One of checkoff’s most important capabilities is the power to convene,” O’Brien says. “To turn shared opportunities into consumer trust and measurable demand.”
The Reality Check: It’s Tough Out There
Board chair Marilyn Hershey didn’t sugarcoat current conditions. Input costs are brutal. Tariffs are appearing on bills for the first time. Consolidation feels more intense than ever.
“If you’re close to the numbers on your farm, you know,” Hershey says. “It is tough right now.”
That’s why the work matters. Why promotion dollars need to deliver ROI. Why partnerships must be evaluated and adjusted. Why the relationship between National Milk Producers Federation and DMI has never been more critical.
“We are definitely stronger when we work together,” Hershey says.
The challenges are real, but so are the opportunities — if the industry can stay committed, resilient, and ready.
What Comes Next
Corey Scott took the DMI reins on Oct. 12, 2026, following what Hershey described as an exhaustive search of more than 200 applications, narrowed to nine interviews, then four extensive interviews, then two finalists, culminating in unanimous approval.
O’Brien will leave the organization she joined 25 years ago in demonstrably stronger shape than she found it.
But her parting message wasn’t about past accomplishments. It was about future potential.
“The future of dairy will not be built by one organization alone,” O’Brien says. “It will be built by people willing to work together and by a checkoff that knows when to convene people around risks and opportunities.”
She continues: “The relationships we have built aren’t just accomplishments of the last five years. They will create opportunities for dairy for years to come. That’s the legacy I hope to leave — not what we accomplished by ourselves, but what we made possible by bringing others together.”
The Opportunity Ahead
Dairy has a much bigger role to play in health, nourishment and the lives of people around the world. That takes science, investment, patience, creativity and people willing to work together.
The opportunity going forward? Turn volume into value. Science into opportunity. Opportunity into demand. Demand into enduring value for the farmers who make it all possible.
As O’Brien put it in her closing remarks: “Five years ago, none of us could have imagined what these years would bring, and we can’t know exactly what the next chapter will bring. But we do know the opportunities are real.”
For dairy producers navigating unprecedented challenges, that’s not empty optimism. It’s a roadmap built on 25 years of institutional knowledge, five years of strategic transformation and a clear-eyed assessment of where dairy’s greatest opportunities lie.
The checkoff you fund is stronger, more focused and better positioned than ever before. The question now is whether the industry can maintain that momentum, make the hard choices about resource allocation and continue building partnerships that create repeatable, scalable demand.
O’Brien believes it can. After watching dairy farmers adapt and innovate for a quarter-century, she’s betting on resilience.
“I leave this role with gratitude, with pride and deep confidence that the DMI board, the checkoff enterprise and this industry is ready to carry it forward,” she says, “and leave U.S. dairy stronger for the next generation of farmers.”
That’s the work ahead. And for the farmers in the room — the ones paying the bills, making the milk and betting their livelihoods on dairy’s future — that commitment matters more than ever.
