STOWE, VT. — Home Baking Association members in late October elected two flour industry veterans and an experienced manager in the beverage and ingredient sectors to serve as officers for the fiscal year 2023.  

Five directors of the board also were elected for fiscal 2023, which began Oct. 1, during the three-day event at Topnotch Resort in Stowe.

Elected president of the association was Eric Wall, director of sales with Grain Craft in McPherson, Kan. Mr. Wall, a Kansas State University graduate in agricultural economics, initially worked for the family-owned Wall-Rogalsky Milling Co. in McPherson, which was sold to Cereal Food Processors in 2000, a company acquired by Milner/Pendleton in 2014, forming Grain Craft.

As first vice president, the HBA in fiscal 2023 will have a fifth-generation mill worker, Robert Harper, president of Hopkinsville Milling Company in Kentucky. Mr. Harper in 1993 joined the company, which mills flour, corn meal and grits for retail. He received a bachelor’s degree from Yale University and a master of business administration from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University.

Elected second vice president was Ileana Durand, senior marketing manager with ASR Group, West Palm Beach, Fla. Ms. Durand joined ASR Group in 2018 after working in strategic and business planning at Nestle and as a senior brand manager at PepsiCo, among other roles. Ms. Durand received a master’s degree in communications from Universidad del Sagrado Corazón and attended the leadership executive program in strategic marketing at Harvard Business School.

In a presentation of the annual report, outgoing president Courtney Gaine said the non-profit HBA reached 7.2 million educators and consumers with their advocacy in 2022. The HBA promotes increased home baking by providing tools and knowledge to perpetuate generations of home bakers; resources to anyone who teaches or fosters home baking skills; and promotes the many benefits of baking on its website, homebaking.org. The HBA has 33 voting members and two associate non-voting members. The group elected five companies — ADM, American Sugar Refining, Homegrown Family Foods, Panhandle Milling, and The Sugar Association — to three-year terms on the board of directors, joining the following companies currently serving: Ardent Mills, Colorado Wheat, Grain Craft, Hammons Black Walnuts, Hopkinsville Milling, North Dakota Mill, Oklahoma Wheat Commission, Shawnee Milling Co., ThermoWorks and Texas Wheat Producers Board.