Sworn in six months after graduation
Morgan Marburger ’25 champions agriculture at the U.S. Department of Agriculture
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Morgan Marburger ’25 pulled off the interstate in Lafayette, Louisiana, got a library card and asked for a private study room. Her car was packed for Tennessee. In 20 minutes, she needed a quiet place to sit for the most important phone call of her life.
She could not have known that six months later, at 22 years old, she would be sworn in as confidential assistant to the chief of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, USDA, Natural Resources Conservation Service, NRCS — a rare, fast rise for a recent college graduate.
“Agriculture got me to college,” Marburger said. “It got me through college. Now, it’s gotten me a job I never thought I’d get. I want to be its biggest cheerleader.”
Marburger’s professional path was not a straight line as much as it was a string of small decisions while in the Texas A&M College of Agriculture and Life Sciences — a rejected club application, a student worker job, a research assignment, an internship — each one opening to the next.
A string of small decisions
Growing up in Schulenburg, a town of about 3,000 between Houston and San Antonio, Marburger got hooked on agricultural advocacy in an FFA classroom before she ever set foot on a college campus. When she arrived at Texas A&M University to study agricultural communications and journalism, she had a plan: land a spot in a flagship freshman leadership organization.
That plan did not pan out. But the setback pointed her toward something else. She added a second degree in agricultural leadership and development and took a student worker position in the Department of Agricultural Leadership, Education and Communications, a decision that put her in daily contact with faculty who would shape the next four years.
It turned out to be the best redirection she could possibly imagine.
Interested in championing agriculture in Washington, D.C.?
The Agricultural and Natural Resources policy internship program is open to all majors in the Texas A&M College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.
Working in the department connected her with Robert Strong, Ph.D., who invited her into undergraduate research on artificial intelligence in agriculture and producer communication. Strong became the kind of mentor who looped her into ongoing projects, brought her along to present findings and kept checking in long after any single grant or presentation had run its course.
“The projects come and go, and those grants come and go,” Marburger said. “But the experience and the relationships, those are going to last for ages.”
By graduation, Marburger had secured a fully funded master’s program at the University of Tennessee to continue that research. But she had one more Aggie experience ahead of her: the Agricultural and Natural Resources Policy Internship Program, ANRP, an internship that would put her in Washington, D.C., at exactly the right time.
Finding her place in Washington
In May 2025, Marburger moved to the capital to work in the office of a Texas congressional member. Her Tennessee plans were already set. Washington was supposed to be a six-month stop before Knoxville.
But it did not feel like just a summer stop.
“Everyone just seemed very ambitious,” she said. “I would meet random people on the street and think, ‘I would absolutely love to be friends with you.’”
For the first time, she could picture herself building a life somewhere outside of Texas.
Still, she held her course and told herself she would not actively apply for other jobs. If something was meant to happen, it would. Then a USDA policy advisor sent a LinkedIn message out of the blue, asking if she wanted to get coffee.
The coffee, it turns out, was an interview.
A library in Lafayette
Marburger went through the USDA application process over the summer while keeping one foot in her Tennessee plans. She drove to Knoxville, started graduate school and met her roommates, still waiting to hear back.
Her final interview landed while she was on the road again, this time driving back from a visit home to Texas with her car packed and lease already signed in Tennessee. She pulled over in Lafayette and took the call.
“I didn’t really think much would come of it when the USDA advisor first reached out,” Marburger said of the original coffee invitation. “And then all of a sudden I’m in a library in Louisiana doing a final interview with the White House Liaison’s office at the USDA.”
The offer letter arrived on a Thursday, just a few weeks into her graduate program. She accepted, broke her Tennessee lease, repacked her car and drove to Washington, D.C., on Monday. The following Monday, she was sworn in.
Championing agriculture from Washington
Marburger started her career at USDA managing the schedule of then NRCS Chief Aubrey Bettencourt, staffing her at meetings and events, and serving as a communications coordinator for NRCS public affairs specialists across all 50 states.
NRCS maintains field offices in nearly every U.S. county and provides technical and financial assistance to producers through programs like the Environmental Quality Incentives Program and the Conservation Stewardship Program.
The work has taken Marburger to irrigation projects in Washington state and field operations in Arizona, with a trip to Louisiana’s crawfish and sugar cane operations next on the calendar.
In May, the department detailed Marburger to help coordinate the American Heartland Arena at the Great American State Fair, part of the nation’s 250th anniversary celebration in Washington, D.C.
Over 16 days, the arena hosted the first rodeo ever brought to the National Mall alongside a Youth in Livestock Showcase, where 4-H and FFA members from across the country showed their animals in the heart of the capital: a livestock show every morning, a rodeo every evening.
The stock contractor behind it all, the Cervi family, also supplies animals for the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo, where Marburger interned years earlier through a Texas A&M program. Watching them work at the National Mall, she said, felt like “a little piece of home.”
Her degree, it turns out, prepared her for more than she realized when she graduated.
“All of these small moments had such big impacts,” she said. “It’s like tectonic plates were shifting because I did this one thing, and then my whole life pivoted.”
Where the plates shift next for Marburger is yet to be seen. But one thing’s for certain: Agriculture will have an advocate wherever she lands.
