WPI Team

Matt Herrington is President and CEO of World Perspectives, Inc., and brings over a decade of analytical and risk management experience to the company. He assumed full leadership of WPI in 2025, nine years after joining the company. During his time with the company, he has modernized WPI's daily Ag Perspectives report and expanded the firm's consulting portfolio. Under his leadership, WPI's consulting division developed methods and approaches to USDA food aid evaluations the agency deemed "the gold standard".

Mr. Herrington's principal role with the company is to help clients navigate global commodity price risk and market volatility. To this end, he works with WPI's analysts to assess global commodity trends and formulate trading and risk management solutions for clients. Each year, he produces over 450 unique analyses and reports on global grains, oilseeds, livestock, and freight markets. Mr. Herrington routinely executes analyses for Fortune 100 companies, governments, financial institutions, farm organizations, and agricultural producers. Recently, his work has included developing web-based apps and econometric forecasting models that leverage WPI's proprietary data to help clients manage global market risks.

Mr. Herrington also contributes to the bespoke consulting projects WPI delivers to clients. Over the past five years, he has developed industry-leading methods for evaluating USDA food aid donations and commodity monetizations. To date, he has led post-monetization impact assessments for 15 Food for Progress projects across 18 countries in Southeast Asia, Africa, and South America. Additionally, he led two research efforts that gathered national attention after examining the impact of Mexico's proposed ban on GM corn on the North American farm and general economies. Finally, he is responsible for ghostwriting two weekly market publications with 1,100 readers.

Prior to joining WPI, Mr. Herrington worked as an agribusiness consultant for Informa Economics in Washington, D.C. While there, he managed the firm's economic impact studies and worked on projects spanning trade policy analysis, feasibility studies, and market research in food and agriculture.

Mr. Herrington's professional career also includes a role as a Commodity Research and Product Development Manager for the CME Group in Chicago, IL. In this position, he co-developed new derivatives contracts and conducted extensive research on livestock markets as well as their futures and options contracts.

A native of Livermore, Colorado, he earned bachelor's degrees from Colorado State University in Agricultural Business and Animal Science and a master's degree from Kansas State University in Agricultural Economics.

Gary Blumenthal, Strategic Advisor for World Perspectives, Inc., has been with the firm since 1994 and was the company's President & CEO for twenty years from 2005 through 2025. He changed the company's structure from a single office in downtown Washington, DC to a team of more than a dozen agri-food industry analysts located in seven strategically important locations around the world. Additionally, Mr. Blumenthal has diversified the client base for the 320 daily, weekly and monthly specialized information products the company writes each year for the industry. Under his leadership, WPI's consulting division was designated by an industry group as "best in class" and has successfully completed over 160 different projects on behalf of 91 different clients. The projects include products ranging from almonds to poultry, covered more than 50 different countries and involved strategic planning assistance, investment due diligence, market and policy analysis, and audit and evaluation services. Mr. Blumenthal is widely recognized for his industry knowledge and policy expertise, resulting in numerous speeches to industry groups, corporate boards, and public institutions.

Mr. Blumenthal has served on numerous boards and committees, including the joint USDA-USTR Agricultural Technical Advisory Committee for Grains, Feed and Oilseeds, the USDA Emerging Markets Program Advisory Committee, and the World Agricultural Forum.

From 1991 to 1993, he served as Deputy Assistant for Cabinet Affairs to former President George H.W. Bush, and as Special Assistant to the President for Agricultural Trade and Food Assistance. From 1989 to 1991, Mr. Blumenthal served as Executive Assistant and then as Chief of Staff to then-Secretary of Agriculture Clayton Yeutter, providing oversight of all operations in this large federal agency (110,000 employees) and exercising continuous scrutiny over $65 billion worth of programs including research, education, production, domestic and international marketing, food safety and inspection, nutrition, environment, public affairs, economic analysis, legal counsel and administration matters related to USDA's mission in the U.S. and in 60 countries around the world. During the 1980s he served with the Foreign Agricultural Service as Legislative Director, was a speechwriter in the Office of the Secretary of the Air Force, and served on Capitol Hill as a Legislative Assistant to U.S. Congressman Larry J. Hopkins (R-Kentucky).

Mr. Kohlmeyer retired as President of World Perspectives in February 2000 but continues as a consultant to the company and as a member of the Board of Directors. During his 40-year career, he worked in nearly every aspect of agribusiness including grain trading, handling and transportation. He has hands-on experience managing grain handling facilities ranging from small sub-terminals to huge facilities in major terminal markets. He is familiar with all end-uses of grain and oilseeds.

Prior to joining WPI in 1991, he spent 36 years in operations and management with Cargill, Inc. His career with Cargill involved domestic and international grain merchandising with an emphasis on export trade and markets. He managed merchandising and elevator facilities in Ohio and Illinois and was Export Marketing Manager in New York and Minneapolis. Mr. Kohlmeyer also managed Cargill's worldwide winter wheat merchandising and the Cargill Futures Department, responsible for corporate hedging of agricultural commodities. From 1976 until 1990, as an adjunct to his operating responsibilities, he was a regular participant in corporate public and government relations activities as a "hands-on" grain trade expert who could analyze and advocate policies from a pragmatic standpoint.

Mr. Kohlmeyer has been directly involved with Soviet/Russian agriculture since the USSR entered world grain markets in 1972. He helped negotiate those first contracts and many more thereafter. He has traveled to Russia on numerous occasions on business and fact-finding missions. He supervised an important study of Egyptian livestock, meat and grain industries to determine whether feed grain imports were an appropriate use of resources. He has studied, written and spoken about a variety of agricultural policy issues in the U.S. and abroad from the viewpoint of a pragmatic agribusiness participant. Mr. Kohlmeyer has served as an advisor to various U.S. government agencies on agricultural trade, policy and infrastructure matters. Currently, he owns and manages a corn and soybean farm in eastern South Dakota. He holds a Bachelor's degree in History from Princeton University.

Mr. Juday brings an extensive background in both international business and public policy to WPI's Ag Perspectives and Ag Review. He also has expertise in dairy and livestock issues, and his private sector experience includes successfully exporting confection, bakery and snack food products to markets in Europe, Latin America, and Asia.

Previously, he served in the White House as Deputy Director of Domestic Policy in the Office of the Vice President, where he was Vice President Dan Quayle's chief agricultural advisor. Mr. Juday also served as an aide in the U.S. Senate where he was appointed Task Force Investigator to the U.S. Senate Committee on the Budget.

Mr. Juday holds an appointment as an adjunct fellow of the Hudson Institute's Center for Global Food Issues and previously he served as the Director of the Focus on Agricultural Regulation and Markets (FARM) Project of the Alexis de Tocqueville Institution. His writing on agricultural, trade and environmental issues has been published by such national newspapers as The Wall Street Journal, The Journal of Commerce and The Washington Times, as well as industry magazines such as Top Producer, Farm Journal and Feedstuffs.

David Gregg has managed over 70 successful consulting engagements for WPI since 2012 on behalf of over 30 agri-food industry clients – including USDA cooperators, U.S. and global industry organizations and blue chip private sector firms. In his current role, Mr. Gregg manages all facets of WPI’s consulting division from marketing to project completion. Mr. Gregg assists clients in finding unique answers to business problems while developing effective client-contractor relationships and ensuring delivery of valuable insights. Mr. Gregg joined WPI after graduating from Georgetown University with a master’s focused on the intersection of business, economics, and international affairs. A native of Wilsonville, Oregon, Mr. Gregg earned a BA from the University of Portland in Portland, Oregon.

Prior to his current role at WPI, Mr. Gregg interned with the company and supported the firm's consulting and information product divisions. While at Georgetown Mr. Gregg was a managing editor for the Georgetown Journal of International Affairs. Prior to this, Mr. Gregg worked for the Institute for the Study of International Migration, where he supported research and co-authored papers submitted to the OECD and the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

In addition to his consulting experience, Mr. Gregg brings on-the-ground production agriculture perspective to each client engagement. He currently resides in Central Oregon with his wife and family, and enjoys pitching in to support operations on his in-law's commercial cow-calf operation.

Ms. Blumenthal began her career as a journalist before moving to Capitol Hill where she covered the U.S. House Energy & Commerce Committee with a focus on health care policy. She spent several years working in the real estate business before forming her own company to provide specific marketing and promotion services to agents. At World Perspectives, she ensures that analytical reports meet the company's high standards, including market relevance and technical compliance. Her goal is to ensure that WPI's information products are among the industry's best.