Leadership ANPA style: Alaska Native Professional Association grows young professionals into leaders.

• Author: West, Gail
• Position: NATIVE BUSINESS

Business leaders in our Alaska communities can breathe a sigh of relief. The future is in capable hands with help from the Alaska Native Professional Association. Formed in 1998 by a small group of young, Alaska Native people who were seeking networking and learning opportunities with others like themselves, the organization today is a bona fide nonprofit with a flexing membership of approximately 80, a website, Facebook and Twitter pages and a listserv with more than 300 active members.

"In the Native world, ANPA is a well known and established organization," said Jason Metrokin, president and chief executive officer of Bristol Bay Native Corp.

One of the founders, Metrokin recalls that before ANPA he used to meet other Native professionals at Chamber, Commonwealth North or Rotary meetings--business-related functions in Anchorage.

THE REACH

"We seemed to stick out because we weren't the typical members," Metrokin said. "We were younger and we were Native."

This group of five or six, as Metrokin recalls, began to meet for lunch on a regular basis, then decided that there must be others like them who were interested in networking, in hearing views and perspectives of interest to the Alaska Native community. At that point, they began to research and form the new nonprofit.

"We had to learn how to write bylaws, articles of incorporation and so on," Metrokin said. "We had a lot of help from members of the community, but we really had to bootstrap our way through it. In essence, I think that is almost what I appreciated the most--I learned from the ground floor up."

ANPA's mission--to build relationships, leadership and community involvement among Maska Native professionals and organizations--wasn't difficult to create, Metrokin said.

"We looked at the demographic we wanted to attract and we looked at what was missing for this sector of the Native community," he said. "We also wanted access to Native elders who could provide some of what we were looking for. We didn't just pick up the phone and call Roy Huhndorf or Byron Mallott. We didn't have access to those folks, so we took it upon ourselves to ask them to come and engage with us."

LEADERSHIP LESSONS

Another of ANPA's early leaders, Krystal Kompkoff, manager of Alaska Job Corps' Outreach, Admissions and Career Transition Services, said the organization provided young Native professionals with an opportunity to be among their peers and to "try on their leadership styles and learn skills in a...