“I’ve always felt that I had to work a lot harder to prove myself…” says Connie Tipton, from her corner office at the International Dairy Foods Association. She’s been in that office for three years, and spent another 23 working her way there, first as an upstart administrative assistant, to communications, lobbying and senior leadership roles in the trade group. Today, Tipton’s known as one of Washington’s top lobbyists, who deftly manages a cluster of industry groups in IDFA’s web, from rural farmers to dairy cooperatives and multinational companies like Kraft. And she’s avoided the almost annual churn of chiefs at the top of associations, ousted on political whims or… Read More