Her prior experience includes ten years as an advocate for agricultural and rural electric cooperatives at the state and national level, both in California and her native state of Nebraska, and serving as a staff member for then-United States Senator Edward Zorinsky of Nebraska from 1978 to 1985, and working on several U.S. Senate and presidential campaigns.
A major leader in California's agricultural community, she was born and reared on a family farm in western Nebraska which she and her husband co-own with her brother where her family still raises grain crops and cattle.
In her capacity as the secretary of CDFA, Ross was the defendant of the Supreme Court case National Pork Producers Council v. Ross, in which the US Supreme Court upheld the legality of 2018 California Proposition 12, which set standards for the confinement of pigs and other farm animals which produce the animal products sold in California.[2]
