Maver Carey and TKC: 'continued growth in the future'.

• Author: Anjum, Shehla
• Position: LEADING ALASKANS - The Kuskokwim Corporation - Interview

When Maver Carey got her first job at The Kuskokwim Corporation (TKC) in 1994 Alaska's economy was in a periodic decline because of low oil prices and corporations were cutting jobs. Carey had lost her marketing position with a subsidiary of the Arctic Slope Regional Corporation, but was able to find work in the shareholder relations department of TKC, which was also her village corporation. Nine years later, in 2003, she was president and CEO of the corporation.

Raised mostly in Fairbanks and Anchorage, Carey is of Yup'ik, Athabascan, and Caucasian parentage. Her mother belonged to the Hoffman clan of the region, and throughout her childhood Carey spent several weeks every summer at her grandfather's cabin near Aniak. Those trips fostered an appreciation for the land and those who lived there permanently.

Carey graduated with a public relations and marketing degree from Gongaza University in Spokane, Washington in 1990, but says she had no specific plans for a career in business. "I started college intending to major in broadcasting and to work in television, preferably as an anchor in the Seattle area, but I later switched my major to marketing."

The lack of a business background was no barrier. Carey took to her job at TKC and was a quick learner. TKC managers took note and began promoting her. In the nine years before the corporation bestowed its top job on her, Carey had worked in administration management and human resources, served as vice president, and appointed acting president twice. "By the time I became CEO I'd worked in every department," she says.

For the past thirteen years Carey has provided leadership and guided the corporation through changes and challenges. TKC was created in 1977 when ten small village corporations, located in the middle region of the Kuskokwim River, combined their money and lands into one entity with a single board and staff. The villages realized that the move would reduce operating costs and expenses and would result in larger earnings for shareholders.

The corporation began with 1,100 shareholders in 1977. In 1994 it became one of the first Native corporation to start enrolling the original shareholders' descendants. By 2016 the number of shareholders had tripled. "We now have over 3,700 shareholders, and we will keep enrollment open until 2025 when we expect to have 5,000 shareholders. I believe that number is sustainable for us," Carey says.

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Developing Revenue Streams

In 2003, when Carey became CEO, TKC had revenues of $1.2 million. In subsequent years revenues began climbing and peaked at $149 million in 2010, but then declined. Since 2010, the two lowest revenue years since were 2012 with revenues of $57 million, and $2013 with $36.6 million.

The corporation attributes those two low revenue years to a sluggish US economy resulting in a drop in federal contracting income. However...