Once a week for five years (2011-2015), director of member and employee communications Jon Miller drove 15 minutes up Lexington Avenue from Land O’Lakes’ Arden Hills campus to Turtle Lake Elementary School.

There, he met elementary student Harrison Smith, and they spent an hour together each week, bonding over books as reading buddies. This collaboration, which continued through the end of Harrison’s elementary school years, was made possible by Land O’Lakes’ Reading Buddies program.

About 10 years later, the two crossed paths again. This time, through a Microsoft Teams message.

“I paused for a moment, like ‘No way that’s that Harrison Smith,” Jon says. “In my brain, he’s still a fifth grader.”

In 2024, long after his time in the reading buddy program, Harrison joined Land O’Lakes as a supply chain intern based at an Iowa distribution center, becoming a colleague to Jon. While the program that created a meaningful relationship between Jon and Harrison has changed over the years, it remains an important part of Land O’Lakes’ volunteering options for employees.

The Reading Buddies

Jon began volunteering as a reading buddy early in his career at Land O’Lakes.

“At Land O’Lakes, giving back to our community is a big part of who we are and a big part of being a cooperative,” Jon says, “so I was looking for ways to get involved.”

On his first day at Turtle Lake, Jon was paired with Harrison.

At the time, Harrison was learning to read, so most of each weekly session featured him reading to Jon, or the two taking turns, in an effort to build the first grader’s confidence in reading.

“It was an awesome experience,” Harrison says. “Like ‘I have a cool guy I get to hang out with at lunch who gets to teach me how to read.’”

Harrison remembers trying to read Ender’s Game with Jon as a young reader. The two quickly realized it was not a fit for the then-elementary schooler, so they switched to Magic Tree House, Boxcar Children and Bad Kitty books.

The pair continued to participate in the program until Harrison graduated from elementary school, creating a years-long relationship. Jon says that over the years, his time with Harrison focused less on reading.

“Over time, he got older, and he could read just fine,” Jon says. “He didn’t need the reading part, but we would talk and get to know each other and form that relationship where he had someone to talk to, and I had a nice break in my day to go hang out and have fun with a kid I’d gotten to know pretty well.”

One topic in particular, Jon remembered, was another Harrison Smith — who plays safety for the Minnesota Vikings. The football player was drafted in 2012, during Jon and Harrison’s time as reading buddies, and Jon brought in a clipping from the newspaper to show his reading buddy. Years later, Harrison shared he still has the clipping as a memento from his time with Jon.

Harrison also remembers learning about Jon’s career.

“I distinctly remember at one point, he was explaining he worked at Land O’Lakes and would come over [to Turtle Lake Elementary School] during his lunch break,” Harrison says. “As a kid, I thought, ‘Why would you come over here on your lunch break? Why wouldn’t you go to recess?’”

Years later, Harrison says he put two and two together that the Land O’Lakes that made the butter he saw at the grocery store was the same Land O’Lakes where Jon worked that sent him to volunteer at the school. Moreover, he remembers his time with Jon and the reading buddy program fondly.

“It put me on a trajectory to become a lifelong reader,” Harrison says. “I’ve grown to have a love for reading and fiction all because I had this experience and this nurturing opportunity to grow.”

The program was meaningful to Jon, too.

“Honestly, it meant as much to me as I hope it meant to him,” Jon says. “I was early in my career when I started reading with Harrison, and seeing his confidence and skills grow over the years shaped how I try to lead and coach today. Then for him to reach out a decade later as a Land O’Lakes intern was incredible.”

The colleagues

Last year, Harrison applied to intern at Land O’Lakes.

“I thought any company willing to let their employees go invest their time and connect with the community has to be a great employer,” Harrison says. “So I had that in the back of my mind. But additionally, there was a hope Jon was still there.”

Harrison got the job and started as a supply chain intern based in Iowa in May 2024. In August, Harrison reached out to Jon on Teams, now as a Land O’Lakes employee.

“He said, ‘You may not remember me. My name is Harrison, and you were my reading buddy,’” Jon says. “I said, of course I remember you.”

Once they connected, the former reading buddies quickly set up a Zoom meeting. The two talked for an hour, catching up about the years since their reading buddy days.

“He’s somebody from my childhood, so I had this version of him in my head, and he was the exact same,” Harrison says. “He’s a wonderful, caring man who I got to connect with, and I’m so lucky I had that experience.”

The program

Today, the Reading Buddies program has grown into a broader relationship with Reading Partners, a nonprofit that mobilizes communities to provide individualized reading support to students.

Programs like Reading Partners have become especially imperative since the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2024, the Minnesota Department of Education found only 49% of Minnesota students are reading proficiently, a number that has fallen consistently since 2016, and dropped significantly between 2019 and 2022.

“This program is so cool, especially when you look at reading rates in the U.S., specifically in the metro here,” Senior Community Relations Specialist Leah McKeon says. “Kids are falling behind, especially post COVID, and it has serious ramifications.”

Reading Partners works to combat reading struggles by pairing volunteers with students to practice literacy skills in a loosely structured program.

Land O’Lakes employees such as Jon sign up annually to volunteer. With many schools in the Twin Cities metro area participating in Reading Partners, employees may select a school convenient for them, and once a week, they go in for one hour to read with their student.

Leah says before the pandemic, there was a group of employees who volunteered together each week, and now several have continued to volunteer, but on their own.

Volunteering and giving back are a significant focus at Land O’Lakes.

“Every corporation talks about wanting to give back to their communities, but at Land O’Lakes, it’s in our DNA,” Jon says. “We were formed on the idea of working together to create a greater whole. Making that impact on your community, in your backyard… you want to take care of your neighbors wherever you are.”

Harrison experienced Land O’Lakes’ culture of giving back first-hand by packing backpacks for students in the surrounding community during his internship and, of course, through his participation in the reading buddy program in elementary school, solidifying a positive impression of the company’s work early on.

“Land O’Lakes was a part of my community,” Harrison says. “It was part of my childhood.”