AgWest's Washington state president serves as org's youngest senior leader

September 11, 2025

Sonja Jensen has been motivated professionally by her desire to help people, serve customers, and contribute to the community.

Looking back on her 17-year career at AgWest Farm Credit, Jensen, Washington state president at AgWest, says her trajectory has been driven by a strong commitment to learn, problem solve, and support others, which has helped her advance through various roles.

"It's pretty meaningful to me to watch customers and their operations grow and flourish and then also being there when things aren't going as well and making sure that we're helping folks through good times and bad," says Jensen. "That stands out to me."

Bill Perry, CEO at AgWest, says in his nomination of Jensen as a 2025 Rising Star, that she demonstrates exponential growth as a leader.

"Though she is the youngest member of AgWest's senior leadership team, her scope of responsibilities is among the top in the company," Perry says.

AgWest was established in January 2023; the result of a merger between Spokane-based Northwest Farm Credit Services and Rocklin, California-based Farm Credit West. The financial institution operates 58 locations in eight states and has $35.5 billion in total assets as of June 30, 2025, up from $35.3 billion as of Dec. 31, 2024, according to its website.

Prior to the merger, the agricultural cooperative lender operating as Northwest Farm Credit gave Jensen her first job after she graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree in finance and economics from the University of Idaho. Jensen, 39, has since worked her way up from a financial specialist role — a position she started in Lewiston, Idaho, in 2008 — to now serving as an executive member of AgWest's senior leadership team.

Jensen's leadership responsibilities center around providing vision and value, with a concentration on the strategic direction of the organization, she explains.

"You also have to create an environment where people have future opportunities to learn and grow," she adds. "I get to think about how do we make sure we're helping our teams be the best, so that they can be the best for our customers and that's exciting."

Jensen has grown significantly since landing her first role as financial specialist — an internal-facing role mainly responsible for administrative lending duties, she says. Pretty early in her career, she expressed a goal to take on additional challenges and work directly with clients, and in 2011, she was promoted to relationship manager — a customer-facing role where she was responsible for portfolio management. She also relocated to Spokane that year.

"I raised my hand for projects and things as they came up," she says. "I was just excited for other ways to be engaged in the organization."

After moving to Spokane, Jensen says she started learning about technology, software, and processes, and the operations side of the business.

"I started to have more of a depth of understanding of the credit and loan-making (process) combined with this passion for the operation side and process technology and improvements to those areas," says Jensen.

With each career advancement, which includes serving as vice president of lending and insurance and as head of lending programs, Jensen says she was eager to learn and understand more about other areas of business, such as legislative advocacy and stakeholder relations.

Jensen replaced Josh Siler as Washington state president in January 2025, at the same time Siler was promoted to chief lending officer.

"Through her hard work and tenacity, she has achieved success across multiple business units within our company, and garners respect, admiration, and loyalty among her peers and the teams she leads," says Perry. "As Washington president at AgWest, Sonja leads a team of 135 employees across the state who service $8 billion in loan volume and $125 million of crop insurance premium."

Her dedication to a career at AgWest has resulted in a rewarding and validating experience thanks to a supportive workplace culture that values personal growth and strives to promote internally, Jensen asserts.

"You've got to be hungry for opportunities, and have a little bit of fire and competitive edge," adds Jensen. "But you also have to be smart and have emotional intelligence. ... When I think about what I want to be at work, that's the kind of teammate I want to be."

Outside of a longtime career working at AgWest, Jensen's employment at the financial institution also has positively impacted her personal life.

"We actually met through a co-worker that worked at AgWest with me, and her husband introduced us," she says.

Jensen's husband, Chris Jensen, is an entrepreneur and they have two children: a 3-month-old and a 6-year-old.

"We're in a very full season of life right now with two young kids," she says. "Most of my hobbies are are hanging out with my kids and doing things with them and my family and my husband."

Jensen's family helped to instill important values and work ethic in her youth, and she says she still finds their support and draws motivation from them. She gives credit to her parents for helping her to develop a service-oriented career outlook.

"My dad is an attorney and my mom is a real estate agent. My mom loved to help people and take care of people," she says. "My dad is a lifelong learner and a guy with a lot of passions. Both of my parents are engaged with their churches and community."

Some of her short-term goals include helping to develop new leaders and gaining more experience in her current role at AgWest, she says. Having gained a breadth of experience through a variety of positions over nearly two decades, Jensen now aims to build upon that foundation.

"I see myself just continuing to make sure I'm doing the things that I need to do so that we can continue to have great leadership at the organization."