About IFYE
Secretary - Barb Batie
Barb Bierman Batie was raised on a Northeast Nebraska dairy farm and today farms corn and soybeans with her husband, Don, near Lexington in Nebraska’s Platte River Valley. She also maintains a free-range flock of chickens and sells eggs to a growing group of customers.
A 1976 graduate of Battle Creek High School and a 1980 graduate of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, she was an IFYE from Nebraska to then West Germany in 1980.
Since her return, she has been active in the Nebraska IFYE Alumni Association, helping to host the 1982 and 2012 National IFYE Conferences and currently serves as the organization’s treasurer. She and her family have hosted eight IFYEs, two LABO exchanges and countless other international students on short-term exchanges or through groups such as Up With People and the Young Americans.
With a double major in home economics and journalism, Batie has worked in community journalism for 39 years. She was a stringer for the Norfolk Daily News during her IFYE exchange, sending monthly reports back to the paper on her experiences. After her return from Germany, she spent five years working full-time. Since her marriage in 1985, she has done freelance writing and photography for local, state, regional, national and international publications. Her specialty is writing for agricultural magazines.
Barb joined the Board in 2019 and immediately began duties as Board Secretary. Her skills include experience in public relations and marketing, after serving three years as the marketing director for the Nebraska Rural Radio Foundation. She just completed a three-year term on the Nebraska Sesquicentennial Commission, as one of 17 Nebraskans appointed by the Governor to plan and execute the state’s celebration of 150 years of statehood.
Barb and Don have two grown daughters, Juliana and Cicely. Juliana is a vocational agriculture instructor in Nebraska and is married to Doug Loudon. They live at Elm Creek, Nebraska. Cicely is a legislative assistant for Nebraska’s U.S. Senator Deb Fischer in Washington, D.C.
