Sarah Frey

CEO, Founding Farmer of Frey Farms and Author, Appointed to Serve as an Advisor to Chair of the U.S. House Committee on Agriculture

Expert on

Entrepreneur 
Women in Business
Agriculture
Inspirational 
Leadership 
Motivational 

Fee Range

$20,000–$30,000

Travels from

IL, US

Biography

CEO & Founding Farmer of Frey Farms Sarah Frey has been described by the New York Times as “the Pumpkin Queen of America”. That’s because she sells more pumpkins than any other producer in the United States. She describes herself as the “founding farmer of Frey Farms”— a Certified Woman Owned Business she established in 1992 at the age of sixteen. Headquartered in Keenes, IL, Sarah and her four older brothers operate farms and facilities in seven states producing tens of millions of pumpkins and watermelons for the nations top 25 retail chains. Harvard business school even used one of her first major deals as a case study in the art of negotiation. She is the author of the best-selling book The Growing Season: How I Built a New Life–and Saved an American Farm published by Random House in August of 2020. Sarah will also serve as Co-Executive Producer of an upcoming ABC television series based on her life, also called The Growing Season.

Speaker Videos

ENTREPRENEURSHIP

Sarah teaches that a great entrepreneur is someone who makes something out of nothing. It’s been said that “obstacles are just opportunities in disguise”. It’s all about what you do with what you have …and what you don’t have. You can starve to death crying over a handful of seeds or you can put them in the ground and go to work. Until you do, you will remain hungry and poor. But, hungry and poor is not bad — it’s good because that is your motivation to hoe the row until there’s food on your table and money in the bank.

MOTIVATION & INSPIRATION

Sarah believes that inspiration comes from all around us; people, places and things in our daily lives that give us dreams, direction, determination and the drive to create and accomplish not only for ourselves, but also for those we love.

LEADERSHIP & SUCCESS

Sarah says education is about learning from those who have gone before us, whether it is in the classroom, in the marketplace or in the field. Watching, listening and learning from the successes and failures of others schools us on how to avoid the same mistakes while achieving a success of our own that we might one day share with others. This too is a crop that also begins by getting dirty and planting seeds in fertile ground.