Barb O’Brien started her dairy checkoff career covering a three-month maternity leave as a consultant. She never left.
Twenty-five years later — the last five as CEO of Dairy Management Inc. — O’Brien is retiring from an organization that looks nothing like the one she joined, and that’s exactly the point.
“This isn’t your grandpa’s or your grandma’s checkoff anymore,” O’Brien told “The Milk Business Podcast” during a dairy farm visit in Illinois last month, echoing a phrase she’s used throughout her tenure to describe the fundamental transformation of how dairy’s 15-cent-per-hundredweight investment works.
The mission remained the same: Be the voice and advocate for dairy farmers. But how checkoff executes that mission? That’s what changed and what O’Brien thinks positions U.S. dairy for its biggest opportunity yet.
“If I think about where we were five, six, seven years ago relative to plant-based alternatives, it was a battle,” O’Brien says. “We are in such a different place in terms of the desire for real food, simple ingredients, whole food, whole fat. I just feel like now is our time.”
The Business Model Shift
The transformation O’Brien describes started long before she became CEO but accelerated dramatically under her leadership.
During 2005 to 2006, DMI rewrote its business plan, pulling advertising dollars out of the marketplace to recognize something fundamental: the importance of partnering with the middle of the supply chain, not jumping over it.
“We went from being a B-to-C — a direct-to-consumer business model that kind of jumped over the rest of the chain and communicated directly with the end marketplace,” O’Brien explains. “Today it’s a B-to-B-to-C, where we, on behalf of the farmers, are making the investment in science, quantifying opportunities based on what we know consumers want and sharing that work with those who take your product into the marketplace.”
That shift birthed the partnership model that’s become DMI’s signature: embedded relationships with major food service companies where checkoff dollars help develop new menu items and products that leverage the scale, presence and marketing investment of industry giants.
Partnerships That Continue to Produce
O’Brien describes some collaborations as “gifts that keep on giving”:
- Domino’s (started 2009) — Reinvented the pizza experience, and the partnership has now outlasted four Domino’s CEOs. It’s not just about more cheese on more pizzas; it’s storytelling on boxes, in fields, in advertising. During COVID, checkoff worked with Domino’s on touchless delivery. The relationship transcends typical transactions.
- McDonald’s — Redefined and democratized coffee, embedding dairy in a beverage experience millions of Americans have daily.
- Taco Bell — Moved cheese from garnish to center of the plate, transforming how consumers think about dairy in Mexican-inspired cuisine.
“To be a trusted partner, to be embedded in their business, helping to develop new menu and new products — it continues to give us the opportunity to grow business and the occasion, the experience and to continue to surprise consumers,” O’Brien says.
The model leverages partners’ scale and marketing investment.
“It’s a one-plus-one-equals-three or five or 10 in my mind,” she adds.
The Science Foundation: Discovering What’s Next
But partnerships are only half the story. Underpinning everything is science — and it’s what O’Brien worries would disappear without checkoff.
“The work we do in the nutrition, product and environmental science arena is difference-making,” O’Brien says. “That protein story has been validated and revalidated through science.”
She thinks there will eventually be “almost like a protein reconciliation in the marketplace,” where dairy protein’s superiority becomes clear “because of the package that surrounds it.”
DMI’s science work operates on three levels:
- Reinforcing existing benefits and claims — Validating what dairy already does well.
- Discovering what’s next — Uncovering previously unrealized compounds in milk with enormous potential.
- Commercializing science into new products — Working with companies to turn research into market reality.
“I look at this incredible milk molecule,” O’Brien says. “What we have discovered in terms of potential — previously unrealized compounds in milk that have enormous potential in our existing portfolio but also as an ingredient in and of itself.”
DMI has laid out a 10-year research pipeline. The organization’s job is ensuring that science gets shared and commercialized.
Recent work in health and wellness exemplifies the approach: DMI identified health conditions where dairy can play a meaningful role as a food-is-medicine solution, then shared that research with companies who can bring products to market.
The Accountability Evolution
O’Brien inherited an organization facing farmer questions about ROI, transparency and measurement. She responded by building a four-tier evaluation system:
- Tier 1: Real-time, in-market measurement — Tracking engagement, impact and effectiveness of media mix and messaging, making changes to programming in real time.
- Tier 2: Annual KPIs — Every year’s plan has key performance indicators. DMI reports what worked and what didn’t in transparent discussions with the 85-member farmer board.
- Tier 3: Long-term investments — Measuring research and science that takes three to four years to prove out and commercialize. “What a privilege you, as dairy farmers, give us to invest long-term,” O’Brien told farmers. “Your investment allows us to invest in long-term research science.”
- Tier 4: Predictive modeling (newest tool) — Using technology and economics to anticipate and project volume tied to major partnerships, evaluating investment levels and returns before committing resources.
“The farmers are ahead of us in terms of driving that component story and the marketplace is responding,” O’Brien noted, crediting producers for pushing checkoff to evolve.
The Demand Imperative
When asked about the biggest challenge facing U.S. dairy, O’Brien doesn’t hesitate: demand.
“As dairy farmers continue to do what you all do best, as production continues to rise, our job is to make sure we’re driving demand ahead of supply,” she says. “The challenge is significant as we continue to grow and find new homes.”
The stakes are enormous. With more than $13 billion in new dairy processing capacity coming online, the question isn’t just “who will consume all that milk?” — it’s whether checkoff can drive demand fast enough.
O’Brien’s answer: Both domestic and international levers are working.
Through July 2026, overall dairy consumption is up 2.8%, with both domestic and export growth contributing. May 2025 marked a historic milestone: the first time U.S. cheese exports exceeded 110 million pounds in a single month. Monthly exports haven’t fallen below that threshold since.
“We’ve reached a point that we’re exporting more dairy products than we are drinking in traditional forms,” O’Brien says. “This is a structural shift in how American dairy operates.”
The U.S. went from exporting 2% to 3% of milk production in 1995 to 17% today, while domestic production grew 44% during the same period.
The Components Revolution Checkoff Didn’t Drive — But Supports
O’Brien acknowledges one of the biggest transformations in dairy happened on farms, not in DMI’s offices: the shift to component-focused production driven by beef-on-dairy economics.
“The farmers are ahead of us in terms of driving that component story,” she says. “It has changed the way you all operate.”
That shift — breeding dairy cows to beef to create valuable calves while optimizing milk for butterfat and protein — is reshaping everything from breeding decisions to what leaves the farm.
Checkoff’s role? Supporting the marketplace transformation that makes those components valuable.
The proof: In 2010, the U.S. imported 10 million pounds of butter. By 2024, imports peaked at 176 million pounds, with Irish brand Kerrygold dominating American shelves.
Then, in 2025, U.S. flipped from massive butter importer to butter exporter — with 80% of exports coming after August.
“This is a structural shift,” as Corey Geiger, dairy economist with CoBank, puts it. And checkoff’s partnerships, science and demand-building work helped create the market conditions that made it possible.
What Would Disappear Without Checkoff?
When asked what U.S. dairy would look like without checkoff, O’Brien identified three critical losses:
- The science — “I’d worry about the science, which has become so foundational to the growth of the category. Reinforcing existing benefits and claims, but more importantly, discovering what’s next.”
- The voice — “Farmers have become so critical to the authenticity of the category, particularly as consumers are looking back through the chain to understand where their food came from.”
- The convening power — “You can sit in a board meeting and have 70% of the milk of the industry in the same room with farmers leading that discussion around what’s next, the implication of certain decisions back on the farm.”
Without checkoff, O’Brien worries no one would create that collective capability to ensure farmers’ voice, expectations and input into the category’s future.
Advice For the Next CEO
O’Brien came to dairy without farm experience, and she’s candid about it.
“I didn’t want to feel defensive about it, but I did feel I needed to say, ‘You didn’t hire me because you were looking for someone with farm experience,’” she recalls telling DMI’s officer group. “I brought an insight into the consumer and the marketplace.”
Her advice to her successor?
“Listen to your ownership. Listen to farmers. Take the time and understand the lived experience of farmers, and capture the wisdom that they bring and their perspective on the business,” she says.
When O’Brien started as CEO five years ago, her first job was a listening tour — visiting farms, sitting down with producers, understanding challenges and opportunities.
“It was about understanding how we needed to evolve as an organization to better meet the needs of our owners, to ensure our relevance in the marketplace,” she says.
Her other advice: Go back to fundamentals. Stay focused. Scale matters in marketing, innovation and communication. Leverage the system.
“When I first started, I felt like the peanut butter was spread pretty thin,” O’Brien says. Concentration and focus have been key to impact.
The 10-Year Outlook
Looking ahead, O’Brien sees consolidation, vertical integration and globalization continuing. But she also sees checkoff’s role expanding:
- Pushing the science envelope — Continuing to define what’s next through discovery and research.
- Expanding the innovation consultant role — Not just serving existing value chain partners, but bringing new players into the mix.
- Portfolio expansion — Working with major consumer packaged goods companies reformulating with dairy. (She cites Muscle Milk as an example.)
“I see that as a role and future responsibility for checkoff — just to make sure we’re pushing that portfolio further and further out,” O’Brien says.
The Bottom Line: Is Checkoff Worth It?
When asked what she’d tell a young dairy producer questioning whether the 15-cent investment is worth it, O’Brien is certain.
“Absolutely. It is helping assure demand now and future growth,” she says. “If checkoff was not doing some of these fundamental capabilities on your behalf, I think there would be winners and losers. We are working to prop up the whole of the category in a way that builds opportunity — whether you ship through a co-op, whether you ship direct, it’s about priming that marketplace for what’s next.”
She acknowledges farmer concerns about tight margins and every penny counting.
“I encourage the questions and the challenges in terms of our investment,” she says.
But the value proposition is clear: science no one else would fund, partnerships that leverage massive scale, a voice in the marketplace and convening power that ensures 70% of U.S. milk production can sit in one room and chart the future together.
Twenty-five years after taking a temporary consulting gig, O’Brien is leaving dairy checkoff positioned for what she thinks is its biggest opportunity.
“Now is our time,” she says. “Dairy’s time is now.”
