Mary Ann Pease.

• Author: Anjum, Shehla
• Position: ICONIC ALASKANS

People who know Mary Ann Pease speak about her tenacity and focus while on some of Alaska's important projects. She coped with high stress jobs calmly and finished tasks on time. But few know one of the ways she learned to cope with stress so well was by turning down dates from coworkers at Disneyland, where she played the role of Snow White for four summers while attending Albertus Magnus College in New Haven, Connecticut.

Prince Charming

Also while attending college she met someone she didn't want to turn down dates from. At a college dance she noticed David Pease, a tall, good-looking Yale football player wearing team colors. "He was just this big hulking, massive guy and I told my friend Muffy I was going to check him out," she says. She walked over and, as she went by him, intentionally tripped over his feet. "He looked up, then he looked down, and then he said, 'Hey, you wanna dance?"'

That led to a four-year courtship and a June wedding in 1985. The following year Pease and her Alaskan husband moved to Anchorage. They now have two sons, Teddy, twenty-four, and Thomas, eleven. Teddy works with his mother at Resources Energy Inc. (REI), a Japanese company working on a project to export LNG (liquified natural gas) from Alaska to Japan. Pease joined REI in 2012. She is a vice president and the Alaska general manager for the project.

Pease, fifty-four, born in Connecticut, now calls Alaska home. She has a Bachelor of Arts in Economics from the all-women Albertus Magnus College and an MBA in Finance from Bridgeport University. The only sister of three older brothers, she was raised in Milford, Connecticut. Her father owned a landscaping business and emigrated from Ireland. Her mother grew up in New York City.

She began competitive figure skating in elementary school and continued through high school. Daily practice made her so skilled at skating that after high school the Ice Capades and Ice Follies tried to hire her. "I chose college and continued to skate but not competitively, instead I taught figure skating to hockey players at a New Haven rink," she says. She is, however, glad that she skated and said it taught her structure, perseverance, and competitiveness.

Gaining Experience

In the years since 1986 Pease has worked on large telecommunications and utility projects in the state. But she already had five years of experience working for United Technologies Corporation as a financial analyst and on handling various defense contracts, including missile systems.

At United Technologies Pease not only gained experience in financial analysis but also obtained her MBA from the University of Bridgeport, paid for by the corporation. She stayed at United Technologies for five years but moved to Alaska in 1986 when her husband graduated from Yale Law School.

Her skills and five-year experience at United Technologies helped when she looked for jobs in Alaska. "I was immediately hired by the Anchorage Water and Wastewater Utility [AWWU] and began working on its financial management system," she says. That job began her...