From Village to City to Success: How just one employee can help with the heavy-lifting.

• Author: Lavrakas, Dimitra
• Position: ALASKA NATIVE - Jeanie Gusty of Calista Corporation

Jeanie Gusty took a winding path from the small rural village of her childhood to selling almost $3 million worth of heavy equipment last year. But it was the path itself that helped Gusty lean into her individual strengths and set her up to be a unique asset and incredible employee.

Growing up in a tiny Kuskokwim River village, Gusty and her family participated in the traditional life of subsistence hunting, trapping, and gathering.

The residents of Stony River are Athabascan and Yupik. The 2020 census recorded thirty-nine people living there on the north bank of the Kuskokwim River, 185 miles northeast of Bethel.

It's way out in the Alaska Bush, but Gusty says she always had her eye on the big city. She remembers a trip to Anchorage with her first-grade class.

"It was going to the big city," she says. "I knew I wanted to move out of the village."

Why?

I liked running water, TV, going to the movies, dining out.

Gusty grew up in Stony River hunting moose, harvesting berries, and growing vegetables in a garden. While she moved away from the village, she didn't entirely leave the lifestyle behind. She now escapes Anchorage and reconnects to the land at her own property: five acres with a lake tucked in 12 miles west of Sleeping Lady, where she hunts for moose and fishes for trout.

The cabin there was built by Gusty's late fiance Randy Jagues, and it was a labor of love that she treasures.

It's not the only treasure she's found outside the big city. She recalls from her childhood that, in the village, her family had to prime and pump a well for water. One day, it didn't work, and the mechanism ground to a halt. Her dad took it apart and found what was jamming the pump: a gold nugget.

Gusty doesn't know anyone who has looked for gold in Stony River, much less anyone who can say a gold nugget ever came looking for them.

Training Leads to a Dream Job

Gusty, who is Yupik, says her 1996 entrance into the world of business was by way of the Alaska Job Corps, part of the federal government's nationwide Jobs Corps program that provides free career training and education for people aged 16 to 24.

"I went to the Alaska Job Corps for one year to certify as a receptionist," Gusty says. The Alaska Job Corps not only trained her in her chosen field but also taught her how to transition to city life from village life and navigate Anchorage.

"It wasn't easy," Gusty says. "The Job Corps paid us every two weeks, and they taught us how to take the bus. And I...