Kathryn Farmer

Kathryn M. "Katie" Thompson Farmer (born 1970) is an American railroad executive. In January 2021, she became the first woman chief executive of a Class I railroad, succeeding Carl Ice at BNSF Railway.

Biography Kathryn M. Farmer graduated from Texas Christian University with a Bachelor of Business Administration and an MBA in Finance.

Farmer joined Burlington Northern Railroad in 1992 as a management trainee. She has spent her entire career at BNSF (Burlington Northern merged with Santa Fe in 1996 to become BNSF and became wholly owned by Berkshire Hathaway in 2010), holding positions in operations, marketing and finance.

Farmer was appointed Executive Vice President Operations in September 2018. In September 2020, BNSF announced that she would succeed Carl Ice as President and Chief Executive Officer, and also lead BNSF's Board of Directors, effective January 1, 2021. The appointment made her the first woman to lead a major railway operator in North America.

Farmer's appointment as CEO coincided with BNSF's milestone anniversary, marking the company's evolution since its formation in 1995 through mergers and acquisitions.

Farmer was named Railway Age's 2023 Railroader of the Year. In giving the award, the magazine pointed to how Farmer "took the throttle of North America’s largest railroad, in terms of both route-miles and revenue, during unprecedented times, in the midst of a global pandemic."