Brittany Speer recognized by SRU
A resume of Brittany Speer’s employment and advocacy would make any university proud to call her an alumna.
Her resume along with a letter of support from a Butler County commissioner led Slippery Rock University to recognize her as one of the top 10 graduates in the last 10 years.
Speer, 29, was the only alumni that was born and raised in the county to receive one of the Solid Rock 10 Under 10 awards from the SRU Alumni Association on June 11 during homecoming weekend.
“I've always had the attitude of 110% effort. That comes from the values form growing up on a farm. If you do anything, you have to do it the right way and see it through,” said Speer who lives in Cabot.
She graduated high school in the top 10% of her class and then graduated from Butler Community College with an associates degree and membership in the Phi Theta Kappa honor society.
She received a full scholarship to SRU and graduated in 2015 with a degree in marketing. She has been working as a special projects and promotional logistics coordinator for II-VI Inc. in Saxonburg for six years.
Her career in marketing is one of the newer chapters in her story.
Speer is well-known in the agricultural community for many reasons that Commissioner Kim Geyer extolled in a letter that she sent to the alumni association in May when Solid Rock 10 Under 10 candidates were being vetted.
The letter begins by saying that Speer comes a from a long lineage of farmers who still grow crops. She works on the family farm, the Har-Lo Farm in Jefferson Township, while working full-time at II-IV and raising her daughter, Ellie, with her husband, Zach Speer, who also works on the farm.
Geyer's letter goes on to say Speer helped create a Young Ag Professionals (YAP) group within the Butler County Farm Bureau. The group helped raise money to buy grain rescue safety tubes for fire departments to use in the event of a silo entrapment.
The Speers and fellow YAP member Jesse Dressler received peer support training in a pilot program through Butler and Lawrence counties’ human services departments, which led to her suggesting and advocating for a 24-hour helpline to help farmers with mental health issues.
Her efforts contributed to the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture recognizing that some farmers and their families internalize feelings that can stop them from seeking treatment for mental health issues, and the creating of the AgriStress Mental Health Helpline in February, Geyer wrote.
Th helpline number is 833-897-2474.
“Brittany understands that if we want young people to sustain our family farms into the future, their mental health needs to be just as important as one’s physical health,” Geyer wrote.
After 10 years as a member of 4-H, she became a member of the junior board of the Butler Farm Show while she was a junior at SRU and helped create the show’s logo as one of her first marketing projects.
“All that kind of helped build my resume,” Speer said.
She said she also worked on an agriculture promotional video for the Farm Bureau.
“A lot of education is needed in farming. Most people are four or five generations removed from farming,” Speer said. “I am always talking about agriculture — the impact it has on everyone.”
Speer said she was excited to win the award and thanked Geyer for the support.
