While growing up in a Mexican city, Scott Spreen, the new director of the Iowa Agribusiness Export Partnership, didn’t think that he would end up living and working in the agriculture belt of America. Spreen was born in Brazil, but his family moved to Mexico when he was 3 years old. At the age of 19, he moved to the United States to attend the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville. After deciding against becoming a veterinarian, he studied animal science, with an emphasis on poultry. Before he moved to Iowa in 2004, his career in animal reproduction took him to various spots in the United States, Mexico and even Curacao, an island off the coast of Venezuela.

How did your family end up in Mexico?

I was born in Brazil. My father was working overseas for a company called Clark Equipment. My father is American and my mother was German. When I was 3 years old, we moved to Queretaro, a city in Central Mexico of about 280,000.

Did you come to the United States often as a child?

I didn’t have any relatives here, but we came to the States often, probably at least once a year for sightseeing and vacations.

What language did you use the most growing up?

Spanish was my primary language, but English was spoken at home. I went to a bilingual school through the primary grades, and then I switched back and forth between an American school and a Mexican school. In the American school, we spoke English in class, but then outside of class, with friends, I spoke Spanish. I am fluent in both, meaning I have no accent in either language. For people who would hear me speak Spanish on the phone, they’d think they’re talking to a Mexican.

Did your family create a hybrid of different cultures based on its background and your surroundings?

We lived an American lifestyle as far as my father goes. My mom was German. As far as what we ate, we ate more typical American or German food, not so much Mexican. When I grew up, I used to go and eat the noon meal – the big, seven-course meal of the day for Mexicans – at my friends’ house, and then come home later to eat with my family for its big meal of the day.

Why did you move to the United States?

When I was 19, my dad decided to retire in Arkansas, so I moved there with them. They moved to an area with a lot of other retirees, and I went off to the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville. I finished my undergraduate work in 1984 in animal science.

What attracted you to animal science?

As a little boy, I had horses. From the time I was 8 years old, I wanted to be a veterinarian, an equine veterinarian. So I went to college and enrolled in the pre-vet program, but before I got to vet school, I changed my mind. I learned that after the pre-vet program it takes another four years to get your veterinary degree, and then the equine specialty meant looking at another four to six years. I thought I might get burned out with school, so I decided to go get my master’s instead and got into poultry science.

What was your first job out of college?

I went to work for a genetics company out of California dealing with turkey breeding. My wife, Felecia, and I moved out to California and lived there for almost seven years. After our first child was born, we decided to move back to Arkansas in 1992 to be closer to the kid’s grandparents.

Over the next several years, you lived in several places. What finally brought you to the Midwest?

In 1993, I moved back to the States to work for Perdue Farms (Inc.) in Indiana. We moved there in the middle of the winter from Curacao. So we went from having 100-degree weather to it being 20 degrees. Since then, the scope of the jobs I’ve had has kept me around the Midwest because it’s the central part of the ag industry.

What interested you in this job?

The international part of it, and it was not sales. I’ve always enjoyed working with people and networking with people, and that’s more of my style. I had been doing sales for about 11 years, and I was ready for a change. They wanted someone with past experience in international markets, which I had, and someone with an agriculture background. I had worked in the swine industry for about eight years, so I had knowledge of the swine industry here.

What is your main responsibility as the director of the IAEP?

This program was designed as an outreach program to aid small to medium-sized agribusinesses and help them explore international markets. I’ll disseminate information to them from research at Iowa State University’s Midwest Agribusiness Trade Research and Information Center and talk to them about identifying niche markets.

What do you like to do outside work?

I’ve been working on my M.B.A. for the past few years through Colorado State University, so there hasn’t been a lot of free time. I’m three years into it now and one year from finishing. In my leisure time, I like to read a lot of business journals and articles related to technology and information technology. And it’s always fun to go to the kids’ activities (sons are ages 15 and 10).

What is something that might surprise people about you?

I wear a lot of pig ties or poultry ties. I have about a dozen in all.