Junior Achievement Alaska Business Monthly Hall of Fame Laureate: Matthew Nicolai.

• Author: Stomierowski, Peg
• Position: JUNIOR ACHIEVEMENT 2010 SPECIAL SECTION

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When Matthew Nicolai, CEO of Calista Corp., joined leaders of some 564 federally recognized tribes who met with President Obama and aides at the White House last November at the Tribal Nations Conference, he was a long way from home.

Born in Bethel and raised in the village of Kwethluk, Nicolai is a graduate of Chemawa Indian Boarding High School in Oregon. He attended the University of Alaska Fairbanks and Westfield State College in Massaschusetts, and received an economics degree from George Washington University.

Nicolai serves on the boards of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA) Regional Federation and Russian Orthodox Sacred Sites in Alaska, as well as Pacific Northwest, Soldotna and Fairbanks title companies and Title Insurance Agency of Juneau. He also is a member of Anchorage South Rotary and past president of Anchorage East Rotary.

He has helped provide board leadership for other Native, state and community organizations, including the Alaska Federation of Natives, the Anchorage Chamber of Commerce, the Salvation Army (chairman), Alaska Public Interest Research Group and the state's Democratic Party.

Nicolai has was honored in 2000 as a distinguished Eagle Scout for Western Alaska by the Boys Scouts of America and has received the Hugh O'Brien Youth Leadership volunteer award.

CALISTA CAREER

Nicolai joined Calista in 1975 as communications supervisor. He served in various leadership positions before becoming president of the Native regional corporation in 1994. At that time, he recalled, Calista had 54 employees, all in Alaska; by 2008, annual revenues had risen from $6.9 million to $224 million, with 1,196 employees in 27 states, Guam, Iraq, Afghanistan and the United Kingdom.

Assets simultaneously grew from $13.5 million to $145 million, he said, and shareholders equity from $8.8 million to $106.8 million. The firm created more than 3,750 shareholder jobs and awarded more than $3 million in scholarships to Native shareholders and descendents, Nicolai said. He lists creation of jobs in rural Alaska, where good jobs are scarce, as a Calista goal in line with its goal of responsible resource development.

Calista's growth has yielded more than 3,100 jobs over 14 years, Nicolai calculates, assisting 56 villages in the Yukon Kuskokwim Delta. Nicolai said Calista achieved the highest Native hire rate in the state, at 93 percent, at the Donlin Creek gold exploration project near Crooked Creek, expected...