Calista Corporation's positive impacts: focusing on energy, voting, and operations.

• Author: Stricker, Julie
• Position: Alaska's Top 49ers: Featured 49er

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When corporations boost their revenue over a period of a couple of years, they frequently reinvest in the company and reward shareholders by increasing dividends. In the case of Calista Corporation, which more than doubled its revenue from 2009 to 2012, the impacts are being felt directly on the entire economy of Southwest Alaska, where the majority of its shareholders live. In 2012, Calista tallied $404 million in revenue, a corporate record.

For Calista President and CEO Andrew Guy, that success translates into opportunities for the corporation's more than twelve thousand shareholders in the form of jobs, scholarships, dividends, internships, and business opportunities for village corporations.

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"These direct benefits create a positive ripple effect for families in the region and add to Alaska's economic health," Guy wrote in an email. "It can mean a steady income for a family so they can afford fuel and food as a result of long-term employment."

Calista is the second largest of the thirteen Alaska Native regional corporations established under the 1971 Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act. It encompasses more than 6.5 million acres and fifty-six villages in southwest Alaska, an area with strong traditional Yup'ik, Cup'ik, and Athabascan cultures. The majority of residents still speak their traditional languages and practice a subsistence lifestyle.

Guy grew up in Napaskiak, a village about six miles downriver from Bethel, the regional hub. Yup'ik is his first language and he still has strong family ties to Napaskiak and nearby villages, returning for fish camp and to celebrate Russian Orthodox Christmas. Guy's early education was yuuyaraq, or the Yup'ik code of life, which encompasses the mental, physical, and spiritual spheres of a person.

He was in elementary school in 1971 when President Richard M. Nixon signed ANCSA into law, which profoundly shaped Guy's life and career.

Helped in part by a scholarship from Calista, Guy earned a business degree at the University of Alaska Fairbanks and a law degree at the University of Colorado School of Law. He started working at Calista as an intern in 1984 and spent decades in various roles in the corporation before becoming president and CEO in 2010. He knows firsthand the difficulties of living in the region, which is one of the most economically challenged in the country.

ANCSA's role is twofold: the corporations have a mandate to create...