Alaska Native Village corporation review: partnerships and diversification drive growth.

• Author: Anderson, Tasha
• Position: SPECIAL SECTION: Alaska Native Business

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Alaska Native Village and urban Corporations are a huge part of Alaska's economy, participating in all of its major industries and often securing out-of-state or out-of-country contracts which funnel money back into the state. As these companies build their individual economies and communities, they contribute in multifaceted ways to Alaska as a whole. Below is a review of just a few of these companies and their projects over the last year.

Goidbelt, Inc.

Goldbelt, Inc. is an Alaska Native Urban Corporation headquartered in Juneau with more than 3,400 shareholders. In July 2016 the company announced that Elliot "Chuck" Wimberly would serve as its president and CEO. Wimberly had been acting as Goldbelt's interim president and CEO since late December 2015. Prior to taking on his current role, Wimberly had worked for Godlbelt for six years as the senior VP of Federal Operations in the Washington, DC, area, overseeing the medical, defense, and construction portfolio companies. He had previously served as the interim president one other time in 2011 for approximately nine months. Wimberly says his transition to president and CEO has gone well. "I don't have the learning curve that someone who would be new to Goldbelt would experience; I have a working relationship with all of our board members, I know the history of Goldbelt, and I know all the operating unit presidents," he says. In the President & CEO Report in the Spring 2016 "Kookenaa Messenger" Wimberly said, "Despite the changes in leadership, Goldbelt remains stable and continues to experience growth. We are excited about the financial results of calendar year 2015, in both our federal market and in our Alaska operations."

Wimberly says Goldbelt has been focusing on diversification options and investment opportunities in Juneau, the Pacific Northwest, and other parts of Alaska. He says Goldbelt's history has been one of transition. "Initially with the granting of the land that was received there was timber on that land and it was natural to harvest timber, and so for the first iteration of Goldbelt we were a timbering company." After timber the company moved into tourism in Southeast Alaska, which operations included some small cruise ships in Southeast, the Mount Roberts Tramway in 1996, and the Goldbelt Hotel in 1997. "We no longer operate the cruise ships, but we still operate the Mount Roberts Tramway at Juneau," Wimberly says. The Goldbelt Hotel was sold in July of 2015.

In 1998 Goldbelt ventured into the federal contracting market with its first SBA 8(a) company, Goldbelt Raven, which provided medical research scientists to the defense department. "Since that initial company, we now have fourteen companies in the federal market," Wimberly says. "Goldbelt has approximately $300 million in revenue annually and about 92 percent of revenue and incomes comes out of the federal market." Goldbelt has operations worldwide, and Wimberly says the majority of their government contracting takes place in the Lower 48 with a few offices internationally.

The other 8 percent of Goldbelt's revenue comes from Alaska operations, he says, "which includes Goldbelt Security in Alaska, tourism, and transportation."

He continues, "Now the challenge the board has laid out to me and the balance of management is to diversify our portfolio outside of federal contracting and grow the business in the Northwest as well as in Alaska. That doesn't mean we're going to stop or reduce the amount of federal contracting that were doing, we're just going to look at a diversification portfolio in the nonfederal arena." He says that Goldbelt is absolutely looking at diversification opportunities in Alaska: "Creating jobs in Alaska is our number one objective--creating jobs for our shareholders is our first and foremost objective."

In late December 2015 Goldbelt purchased a building in which to house its corporate headquarters, located at 3025 Clinton Drive in Juneau; up until that time the...