Alaska Village Electric Cooperative: The nation's largest electric utility retail cooperative.

• Author: Henry, Arie
• Position: TOP 49ERS SPECIAL SECTION / AVEC

While the Alaska Village Electric Cooperative (AVEC) provides power to just more than 4 percent of Alaska's population, its service map stretches over a remarkably large portion of the state--from as far northeast as Kivalina to as far southeast as Yakutat. So how does a small electric co-op, employing less than 160 full-time and part-time employees throughout the state, manage to thrive as the largest of its type in the nation? Part of the explanation can be found in the cooperative spirit that characterizes rural Alaska,

AVEC was first incorporated in 1967 and officially began operations in 1968. The first three member villages were Hooper Bay, Nulato, and Old Harbor. Today, as AVEC celebrates its 50th anniversary, that membership has bloomed into fifty-eight villages consisting of a combined population of more than 33,000. As geographically, economically, and culturally diverse as this base is, the common thread tying them together is a close-knit sense of community.

"When your heart is in the right place, [the villages] absolutely open their arms and absorb you into the extended family there. That sense of community and belongingness is something you don't get in any urban setting--I don't care where that urban setting is," says Meera Kohler, AVEC's president and CEO.

Kohler experienced this firsthand when she emigrated from her native India to the United States with her then-fiancee. Their first stop: Cordova, Alaska.

"I was accepted. I was different, I was a lot darker then, I had a thick accent. I looked different, I spoke different, I thought different. And yet I was immediately a part of the family. You get that anywhere you go in rural Alaska."

Kohler became the first bookkeeper of a newly formed cooperative in Cordova that had recently acquired the assets of the city's electric utility. It sparked a lifelong career in electricity. She became that co-op's CFO, was then recruited as the CEO of Naknek Electrical Association, became general manager for Anchorage's Municipal Light & Power, and was attracted back to the electric co-op world a couple of years later when AVEC's CEO position opened. For Kohler, it was an ideal fit.

"Most of my electric career really has been in rural Alaska. I don't live in rural Alaska now, but my heart is in rural Alaska; I raised my kids in rural Alaska. So to me, the sustainability of rural Alaska is number one. The cultures there are so special that for me, to think about losing one of those cultures...