Meet Teddy Bekele

Chief Technology Officer, Land O’Lakes

Before leading the digital revolution at one of America’s largest farmer-owned cooperatives, Teddy Bekele vowed he would never work in agriculture.

Born in Ethiopia and raised in Italy, Teddy watched his father—an agronomist—lose his farm to nationalization under a dictatorship. That experience, combined with the volatility of subsistence farming, pushed him toward mechanical engineering and a career in enterprise tech. He wanted nothing to do with the family business of feeding the world.

But in 2013, he joined Land O’Lakes, drawn by a culture of resilience that reminded him of his father. Today, Teddy is the CTO of a Fortune 200 cooperative, where he isn’t just managing IT—he’s building “Iron Man suits” for farmers. Under his leadership, the organization has moved from a project model to a product model, delivering over $100 million in cost savings and sequestering a million metric tons of carbon by turning data into currency.

In this episode:

• Why AI isn’t about replacing the farmer, but building them an “Iron Man suit”
• The “four buckets” framework for practical AI adoption
• How to turn sustainability from a cost center into a revenue stream
• Why the intuition of a farmer is as valuable as the data in the cloud
• Leading through influence when you don’t have total control

Subscribe to Real Leadership on YouTube to keep up with the new episodes

Interested in being in Real Leadership? Join the conversation

Follow Real Leadership on LinkedIn

Listen on Apple Podcasts and Spotify

Follow Real Leadership on Instagram