Women in Weights and Measures

Roxanne Chepsongol
Division Director
New Mexico Department of Agriculture Standards and Consumer Services

Roxanne Chepsongol is the New Mexico Department of Agriculture’s Division Director of weights and measures located in Las Cruces, New Mexico. Her passion for working with industry and consumers stems from her agricultural background growing up on a dairy farm. Roxanne is devoted to serving the consumers of New Mexico through regulatory compliance, industry relationships and building up her inspector team for success. Roxanne is inspired daily by her husband and their two children, together they own and operate a small homestead operation in rural Dona Ana County. In her free time, she enjoys farming, gardening, hiking, volunteering with 4-H and spending time at the lake with her family.

Whitney Corley
Program Manager of Metrology
Louisiana Department of Agriculture & Forestry

Whitney Corley is a driven professional who earned her degree from LSU in 2016. Since 2018, she has been working as a metrologist at the Louisiana Department of Agriculture and Forestry, where she recently assumed the role of Program Manager of Metrology. Her dedication and efforts have contributed to the department’s success, and she takes pride in being a part of the team that supports the weights and measures community

Valorie Forbes

Administrator Specialist II
Delaware Department of Agriculture 

Valerie joined the Delaware Department of Agriculture Weights and Measures in 1997 as the Administrative Specialist II. Valerie keeps the wheels turning within the section. Along with handling complaints, accounts payable, and the daily operational needs of the section she maintains the Voluntary Serviceperson, Weighmaster, and WinWam Programs, assists the Administrator with hiring, and the annual budget details as well as writing any RFP for the section. She is currently a member of the SWMA PDC and MEMS committees.

Erica Garnier
Director of Weights and Measures 
Measurement Canada

Erica began her career 20 years ago as a weights and measures Inspector for Measurement Canada in Calgary, AB. She applied for the job while waiting for my application for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) to be processed. By the time she had completed her technical training and was in the field conducting examinations on her own, the RCMP called to offer her a job and she turned it down. She was really enjoying the work she was doing. She was the only female W&M inspector in the Region at the time. Her male colleagues laughed when she remarked how interested the public was in the examinations they did. She always had people coming up to her while examining fuel dispensers, asking about what she was doing. Apparently, they didn’t have the same experience! She also used to get a lot of help from traders with loading and unloading hand weights. Again, apparently this was not their experience! In her first few years as an Inspector, she recalls travelling to a remote location to conduct an examination of a truck mounted meter. After backing up the prover trailer (flawlessly of course) the trader asked her what she was doing there. She began explaining Measurement Canada’s mandate and how our marketplace monitoring was unbiased and random. The trader stopped her and said “No, what are YOU doing here? A woman doing this work”. She remembers just laughing because she was 25 and wasn’t sure what to say. Now she is so happy to see the number of female inspectors working at Measurement Canada. It is no longer unusual to see a woman in the field.

Ryanne Hartman
Senior Weights and Measures Specialist
Michigan Department of Agriculture and Rural Development Weights and Measures Program

As the Senior Weights and Measures Specialist Ryanne has oversight of the service registration program with responsibility for the review and reporting of all Place in Service reports submitted by industry. She also administers, maintains, and creates new registration exams, directs field audits of submitted service work, and direct field audits of submitted service work.

Margherita Lebsack 
Weights and Measures Inspector III
San Luis Obispo County Department of Agriculture/Weights and Measures 

Margherita is enthusiastic about her career as a weights and measures inspector and the quantity control specialist for the San Luis Obispo County Department of Agriculture/ Weights and Measures where she started eight years ago. She embraces all aspects of her profession, from routine device inspections to special investigations and is proud to play an important role in ensuring equity in the marketplace. In addition to her role as an inspector, Margherita has served on the Professional Development Committee at the Western Weights and Measures Association annual meeting and has participated in the development of the National Conference on Weights and Measures Professional Certification exams in the subject areas of Packaging and Labeling and Method of Sale.

Christina Osborn
State Director
Texas Department of Agriculture 

Christina has been Director for Consumer Product Protection since August of 2018. In December of 2019, she was additionally tasked with serving as Director for the Licensing and Data Quality program for the Texas Department of Agriculture and is also over the agency’s licensing of all regulatory programs. She has been instrumental in improving the efficiency of the Department’s occupational licensing.

Also, Christina oversees the Texas metrology lab located in Giddings, Texas. She works with the metrology lab manager and staff, Consumer Product Protection program staff, and TDA field staff to ensure the Texas Department of Agriculture makes every effort to provide equity in the marketplace.

As part of her time as a regulatory official at another Texas state agency, Christina spent 10 years at the Texas General Land Office, as an inspector; lease, easement, contract and property manager where her main job function was to lease state lands for hunting, grazing and oil and gas production. She became a licensed CTCM, or Certified Texas Contract Manager during her time at GLO.

Julia Schlipp
Program Manager, Device and Commodity Inspection Program
Missouri Department of Agriculture

Julia has worked for the State of Missouri for twenty-three years, has held several leadership roles during that time, and has been involved in many different projects to improve efficiency in state government. Julia is currently the Program Manager for the Device and Commodity Inspection Program within the Missouri Department of Agriculture, Weights and Measures Division. In this role, she helps ensure equity in the marketplace through the work her Program performs. She directs and oversees twenty field staff who provide annual inspections of weighing and measuring devices, performs inspections on egg/milk products, and provide price verifications and package checks on products sold throughout the state. All these areas affect Missouri consumers each day, so she takes great pride in helping Missouri consumers get what they pay for.

Kate Smetana
Metrologist

Colorado Department of Agriculture 

Kate is a Metrologist and Quality Manager for the Colorado Metrology Laboratory. She began her Weights and Measures career with the Colorado Department of Agriculture in 2008 as a field inspector. In 2012 she took an opportunity to transfer into the lab where she has played a pivotal role in designing their new laboratory facility and pushed to increase the laboratory's scope of accreditation to include Echelon I calibration services. In addition to proudly serving the consumers of Colorado, Kate is an Associate Instructor with the NIST Office of Weights and Measures.

Claudia Verdugo
Supervising Agricultural/Standards Inspector

San Diego County Department of Agriculture, Weights and Measures 

Claudia’s career with the County of San Diego, Agriculture/Weights & Measures Division started at the end of 2007 when she was in her early 20s and fresh out of San Diego State University with a Bachelor of Science Degree in Biology. She started on the agriculture side as an Insect Detection Specialist for the Pierce’s Disease program. Late 2009, she was promoted to inspector and worked in the Agricultural Standards division inspecting certified producer and farmers markets, organic certification, standardization inspections of fruit and vegetables, and shell egg inspections. In 2011, she was assigned to quantity control and price verification. It was during that time that she truly learned all about what Weights and Measures does for the community and business owners. Her dedication to Weights and Measures was acknowledged in 2013 when she was awarded Employee of the Year and shortly after she was promoted to Weights and Measures supervisor. She was born in San Diego but grew up in southern Missouri and all over Colorado. She loves to hang out with her family, watch her kids do what they love, vacation, and play the piano.

Alison Wilkinson
Chief of Weights and Measures 
Maryland Department of Agriculture

Alison is the Chief of Maryland Department of Agriculture, Weights and Measures. Before this role, she was previously the Assistant Chief and managed the Liquid Measuring Device program. Wilkinson began her career as a registered service technician for LPG and vehicle tank meters, registered with Weights and Measures in multiple states. She decided to leave the private sector in 2018 and join MDA Weights and Measures as an inspector. Quickly advancing in her career, Wilkinson became the first female vehicle scale inspector for MDA Weights and Measures before transitioning into the office in April of 2022.