Andrew Johnson Interviewed at 96th Texas FFA State Convention in Houston

Hey, I'd like to welcome you to another episode of Mission Matters. My name is Adam Torres and I am at the Texas FFA convention in Houston, Texas. And today my guest is Andrew Johnson. Hey, Andrew, welcome to the show. Hey, Adam, thanks for having me on. All right. So, man, excited to have you here. We've been covering the conference now for three years in a row. What brings you to the conference today? So it's my first time back in 10 years. Houston's my hometown. The last convention I was at, I was working for the foundation as a ambassador program coordinator in 2014, in 2013. So it's been a, been a good decade. Yeah. So tell me your story. How'd you originally get introduced to FFA? I originally got into FFA through my dad. He was a former state president and former national president Jake N. Johnson. Back in the seventies. And so when I was a sophomore in high school, one of my friends that was in a biology class as a freshman was in FFA, and so she couldn't pique my interest and I knew my dad had been active in it through basically his entire adult life. Mm-Hmm. . And so I kind of just approached him, asked him kind of what the deal was. He introduced me to the Ag teacher. Mm-Hmm. . And I am. I came from pretty much the one chapter that I'm aware of in the entire country where there are five high schools that are pooled to one FFA chapter. It's been around since 1950. Yeah. It's on 18 acres in the middle of urban Houston. Yeah. With just neighborhoods and businesses around it. So it's just a little piece of rural paradise right in the middle of Houston. Yeah. So got involved that way. And then because my dad and Aaron are so well connected and tight and have worked together for 20 years. That's kind of what got me into the Ambassador program and How do you feel FFA has helped prepare you in life? Like, how do you feel it's enriched you? Initially, I just got in because I was interested in the animals I did raise. Livestock with pigs and a scramble steer for Houston Livestock Show Radio. I grew up going to the rodeo pretty much every year. It's a big thing around here in March. For And really the one big thing that I got out of it that I wasn't expecting to initially was all of just the leadership training talking to people face to face, like learning how to actually be an adult and work in business and develop relationships. It's different to start that at such a young age. I would argue most people that don't go through something like a Texas FFA, they don't really even start to. Get that experience till after college. Right. Like everything before college has nothing to do with that when I think about like the some of the programming things that people are Doing here, especially some people that have that gap year. They're going to all the chapters They're doing all these speeches and all this and I'm like That was like in my mid twenties, maybe I started to do that. Or if you think about depending on how high up somebody goes in FFA, that if they're in front of a board doing like getting, you know, being interviewed, like I'm like, that's like something a CEO or a C level individual gets that happens in their life in their like forties. But that's happening at such a young age. It's absolutely amazing to me. Yeah, and it's kind of crazy because a lot of people, when you think about high schoolers in Texas, your brain immediately goes to football and athletics. Yeah, that's what Mike did. A lot of teachers, they try to get their kids, and parents try to get their kids into athletics to teach them accountability, teamwork, leadership. All of the things that FFA provides, but athletics doesn't really do that in a professional environment. For sure, for sure. So that way when those kids are actually going into the real world, they have actual practical experience applying those things and applying those lessons. Yeah, yeah. If you're on a baseball diamond or a gridiron, you're not necessarily getting that. Yeah, you might get some discipline, you might get some scheduling, you're obviously getting the physical side of things, but, Yeah, definitely. You're not doing Parliament. I don't know is there is is Texas have in their football parliamentary procedure or like no don't think so You sure that isn't for at least at least not back in my baseball days. We didn't I'll take it What keeps you coming back man? Like you lot a lot of things could be doing a lot of like interest like what keeps you coming back to convention. So I mean, obviously take this with a grain of salt, it's been 10 years since I've been back, but it's just the ability to give back and pay it forward and kind of use some of my life experience just to be able to kind of give some of these kids that are trying to figure out who they are, what they want to do with their life, give them just some advice coming from somebody who's kind of late twenties, early thirties, just kind of getting into the beginning of the professional grind. Thank

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