Afognak Native Corporation: competing on the international stage.

• Author: Slaten, Russ
• Position: SPECIAL SECTION: Alaska Native Corporation

Afognak Native Corporation is seeing brighter skies with one of its most prominent contracts to date beginning in September, an over $10.5 million security services contract with France-based aircraft manufacturer Airbus in Mobile, Alabama.

Afognak Native Corporation is a village corporation based in the Kodiak Archipelago. Afognak has nearly one thousand shareholders for which the corporation maintains a responsibility to care for their social, cultural, and economic wellbeing in perpetuity. Afognak's largest wholly owned subsidiary is Alutiiq, LLC, offering services in operations and maintenance, logistics, construction, security, and IT, among others. Additionally, Afognak operates businesses in oilfield services, leasing, and bioenergy.

Afognak's current President and CEO Greg Hambright began with Alutiiq in 2003 as the program director for a Naval Air contract, a position he received in part due to his history as a navy pilot. He moved up the ranks as a vice president in the subsidiary to senior VP of Technical Services while working in the Huntsville, Alabama office. After a ten-month hiring process, Hambright was chosen amongst his colleagues within the corporation and external candidates with government contracting experience.

As a non-Native, Hambright is prepared to continue learning about Alaska Native culture, especially the Alutiiq and Suqpiaq culture of Kodiak. As a 10-year employee of Alutiiq, LLC, he's been coming to Alaska over the years. Hambright has moved from Huntsville, Alabama, to Los Angeles; Washington, DC; Maryland; and back to Huntsville throughout his career.

Competitive Mindset

As Hambright changes his home base to Anchorage as the president and CEO, he says part of Afognak's continued success will depend on a smooth transition from directed source business to the more traditional competitive business model in Afognak's four core business lines.

"As we develop the company over the years, and try to keep up with the explosive growth of the company on sole source [contracting], we move into competition, and we're having to take the systems that were built and refine them and refocus those systems for a competitive marketplace for the future," Hambright says.

Alaska Native Corporations (ANCs) both on the regional and village level have dealt with a decline in directed source government contracting and have seen an overall shift into a more competitive model over the last few years, Hambright says. ANCs are...