Female leadership growing in Alaska native corporations: coincidence or culture?

• Author: Liles, Patricia
• Position: NATIVE BUSINESS

A growing number of Alaska Native corporations are led by female executives, women who have responsibility for overseeing operations that generate hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue, distribute significant dividends to shareholders and balance successful business opportunities with sensitivity to cultural values.

Among the female leaders taking on that challenging role are the heads of some of Alaska's largest business organizations--Bobbie Quintavell, president and CEO of Arctic Slope Regional Corp.; Marie Green, president and CEO of NANA Regional Corp., Helvi Sandvik, president and CEO of NANA Development Corp., and Margaret Brown, president and CEO of CIRI.

Together, these Native regional corporations represent nearly $3 billion in total business revenues for 2007. That number is likely to grow prompting other corporations to ask enterprising women working up the corporate ladder for more responsibility.

COMING UP THROUGH THE RANKS

"I am so pleased to see women coming up in the ranks and participating. There's no stopping so many young women in the organizations who are working and learning and mentoring," said Brown of CIRI, during a recent telephone interview. "I was mentored by men, because there were no other women to mentor ... in the many, many years that I worked at CIRI, I would go to meetings and be the only woman in the meeting. That happened for years and years ... now it's rare to go to a meeting that is not peopled with many women. In my lifetime here at CIRI, I've seen that change."

Is this trend of increasing numbers of female leaders mere coincidence or is it based on some cultural aspect? Opinions of those who have scaled the corporate ladder are somewhat mixed. Sandvik of NANA Development Corp. oversees businesses that contributed $975 million in revenues in 2007 to its regional corporation, NANA.

"Honestly, I think it's coincidental," she said. "In our region, in my lifetime, there have always been a lot of women involved in things at a community level ... if you were a girl, it's always been equal opportunity to be involved in things."

Whether it is selecting or voting for people to serve on a tribal or city governmental organization, "... people elect people who they think will do the job. It does not matter whether they are male or female," Sandvik added. "You're only as good as the people you surround yourself with, so there should be no gender bias. Many of our team are female, so I think you will continue...