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When Modern Counsel spoke with Mashenka Lundberg in 2017, she talked about the mission of supporting CoBank. The cooperative bank, with over $200 billion in assets, provides loans and financial services to agribusinesses and rural power, water, and communications providers in all fifty states and wholesale loans, and financial services for affiliated Farm Credit associations in twenty-three states. They essentially enable some 78,000 farmers, ranchers, and other rural borrowers to provide food and fuel for the rest of us.
After that conversation, Lundberg was promoted to the chief legal officer role at CoBank and was asked to join the firm’s management executive committee, one of only ten executives helping plot the course of the organization. It’s a completely different focus for the CLO, but one she’s fully embraced.
“Having practiced law for over thirty years, I can’t help but bring that focus to the committee, but it’s really about employing a much more enterprise-wide view of the organization,” Lundberg explains. “We have a visionary CEO who wants to hear how people from all parts of this organization can provide value, and I think that’s incredible.”
It was a wise addition, considering that Lundberg not only sat on her old law firm’s executive committee, but also acted as general counsel of her firm. It was a pivotal moment that hinted at both the depth and breadth of issues Lundberg would successfully be able to tackle in an in-house role.
“When I was asked to act as a law firm general counsel, I wasn’t a litigator by practice,” Lundberg remembers.
“Law firm GCs also tend to be a little older when they step into the role. I vividly remember the conversation with the head of the executive committee who asked me to take on that job. He talked about the importance of being able to connect with people, with lawyers in the firm, and work with people during some of the most challenging moments of their careers. That was an incredible amount of trust to put in me, and it changed my life,” she says.
In Lundberg, CoBank has a CLO who enthusiastically believes in the organization she supports, and whose somewhat nontraditional path to the role has only made her more adaptable in tough times.
It’s a perfect time to be checking back in with the CLO, because the company’s net income last year was $1.6 billion compared to 2017’s $1.1 billion, and employees are now at 1,260 from 2017’s 953. CoBank’s corporate philanthropy program, including matching grants for customer donations to rural charities, totaled $12 million last year.
But all of those positive numbers may skew the real challenges faced over the last five years by the farmers, ranchers, and rural businesses that Lundberg supports.
“I know it’s not a time anyone wants to remember, but the pandemic was such a pivotal time for so many reasons,” Lundberg explains. “When you see what the people you support, your customers, go through and they have to reshape their entire business, it changes you. It was a very uncertain time with an unprecedented economic downturn, and that had a profound impact on agriculture and rural infrastructure as well.”
Things didn’t get any easier. When Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, agricultural commodity prices took off, with CoBank in the middle of a $7 billion surge in seasonal loan volume. CoBank had to step in to help customers make margin calls and provide an influx of capital into lagging markets. Then the interest rates started going up.
The following year, a number of prominent regional banks went belly-up, a result of those rising interest rates. That’s when CoBank initiated a new approach, the CoBank Flywheel, to reorient its thinking and approach. Centered around the work of Jim Collins, the flywheel concept helped CoBank ultimately pay over $1 billion in dividends to customers in 2024, just a year later.
“When you look at the last five years and all of these events, I think it comes down to the fact that we worked very hard to stay relevant and serve our mission,” Lundberg says. “We were there for the rural and agriculture-centered communities we serve, so we’re incredibly proud of that.”
At present, Lundberg oversees a team of 105 people, including some two dozen lawyers. From that perspective, Lundberg has chosen to lean in on mentoring through both a formalized program at CoBank and more informal efforts.
“We have a visionary CEO who wants to hear how people from all parts of this organization can provide value, and I think that’s incredible.”
Mashenka Lundberg
For multiple reasons, Lundberg’s experience, her path, and her willingness to continue to grow make her exactly the kind of person the next generation of professionals should be looking to for guidance. Lundberg can provide lawyers with legal and career advice, but she also gets matched with employees outside of the law department. Sometimes, the very best advice comes from someone outside one’s normal purview. The CLO has been an active formal mentor since CoBank launched its program.
Lundberg remains deeply committed to CoBank’s mission to help farmers and ranchers help us. CoBank helps ensure the breadbasket of America makes it through the tough times. It’s a role Lundberg relishes.
“Congratulations to Mashenka Lundberg for another excellent year at CoBank. Your insightful legal counsel and strategic leadership continue to drive innovation in banking and beyond.”
–Todd Noteboom, Partner
