Alaska's Native Regional Corporation Leaders.

• Author: KANE, ROGER
• Position: Brief Article

UP CLOSE AND PERSONAL

The leaders of Alaska's 13 Native regional corporations. represent cultures that are in some ways as different as black and white, but the people leading the corporations have more in common than a first glance might reveal.

Many share the experience of having been uprooted as youngsters and sent to Bureau of Indian Affairs boarding schools. All have different educational backgrounds and view education as the cornerstone of success in the future.

Some were called to arms, to defend the United States against aggressors in Germany, Korea and Vietnam. Others fought battles at home for subsistence rights, equality or cultural survival.

All have worked lifetimes to achieve the level of success they have attained and each is concerned about the health and welfare of their fellow shareholders.

Cultural preservation is important to all of the presidents interviewed, and most would agree that financial success is important, but that social and cultural survival is even more important.

Each president looks with optimism at the future of the corporations they are tasked with leading, and all echo the sentiment that to be successful shareholders need to take pride in their heritage and in themselves.

Jacob Adams

President and CEO

Arctic Slope Regional Corp.

A lifelong resident of Barrow, 55-year-old Jacob Adams takes great pride in the fact that he has helped raise the standard of living and quality of life for North Slope residents. He has been married 30 years and has six children- three sons and three daughters. His involvement with ASRC has spanned 28 years, 17 of those as president.

He said the community has seen great changes in his lifetime, including the establishment of a fire department, construction of schools, health clinics and roads, as well as the ambitious project of bringing water and sewer systems to every Barrow household.

Adams is a whaling captain and a leader within the Alaska Eskimo Whaling Commission. He has been instrumental in thwarting attacks on subsistence whale hunting and is a long-standing member of the Barrow Whaling Captains Association.

"Growing up, I was taught to respect elders and learn from them about how one should live. Being taught to hunt and share the successes of the hunt with the community--those kinds of things have been important to me over the years," Adams said. "I love to hunt. Whales, caribou, seals--things that provide traditional foods for our communities and families."

Adams said it is important to pass on what he has learned from his elders to younger generations.

"Things that threaten our culture, especially in rural Alaska, are some of the social problems we are running across, he said. "That is an issue we work on quite often. We try to steer our people away from the abuse of alcohol and other drugs.

Like many Alaska Native children in the early 1960s, Adams was removed from his home by the federal government and sent to Mount Edgecumbe, a Bureau of Indian Affairs boarding school at Sitka. The BIA opened Mount Edgecumbe in 1947, at the site of a World War II naval air station, as a high school for Alaska Natives, where they received academic, religious and vocational instruction.

Adams attended Mount Edgecumbe for five years. He spent nine months out of the year at the boarding school. "When I first left, (being away from home) was not very good. I was about 13 years old," Adams said. "But spending time away from home allowed me to become more self sufficient. I learned how to do some things at a young age and I got a chance to meet young kids from all over Alaska."

ASRC has 5,225 employees and gross revenues of $885.5 million.

Charlie Alasuk Curtis

President

Northwest Arctic Native Assoc.

Born in Kotzebue in 1950, Charlie Curtis is at home in Northwest Alaska. An Inupiat Eskimo, he was raised in the village of Noorvik, and now lives in Kiana.

He enjoys yearly vacations to catch and dry whitefish or to hunt. During those holidays, he said he rarely travels above Kiana or below Noorvik and prefers to stay close to home to be with his family.

His father, who was a missionary, was killed in an airplane crash when Curtis was just a boy. While there is no way to fill the void left by a deceased parent, he was fortunate to have an extended family to help raise him. "Even today, the extended family is something that is always there for me--it's a given in Inupiaq culture," Curtis said.

Curtis was sent to Mount Edgecumbe and said he learned a great deal there. "One of the biggest things I came to appreciate was where I came from and who I am. And I learned to appreciate the diversity in cultures Alaska has--other people's points of views, value systems and cultures," he said.

Curtis spent three years at Mount Edgecumbe, but left the school before graduating. He graduated from William E. Beltz High School in Nome in 1969. He planned to continue his education, but the Vietnam War interrupted that plan.

Just as many patriotic Alaska Natives did, Curtis volunteered for military service in Vietnam. He became a U.S. Navy aircraft mechanic. He served four years on the aircraft carrier USS America and was honorably discharged in March of 1973. Curtis returned to Alaska after the war and in 1974 was married to Lydia Westlake of Kiana. They have four children and two grandsons. In 1979, Curtis received an associate in arts degree in business administration at Kenai Peninsula College, Soldotna.

"The most important lesson I learned is to make sure you understand. Listen to people. Understand what they are saying, and if any issues come up, try and find a resolution with a win-win solution," he said.

However, Curtis recognizes that there is only so much you can do when dealing with broader social problems.

"I lost quite a few friends due to alcohol. I look back and I wish I could have helped in some way. We view it as a normal occurrence--suicide and alcohol related deaths. But human life is precious and I keep wondering 'how could I make a difference?' We were once healthy and proud members of society," he said.

NANA has 1,500 employees and gross revenues of $135.1 million.

Darryl F. Jordan

President and CEO

Ahtna Corp.

Ask Darryl Jordan his recipe for success, and you will probably come away with a mixture thick from hard work, steeped in education, with a healthy dose of luck thrown in for good measure.

Jordan said his parents had instilled in him a solid work ethic when he was still a young boy. He said he learned from his father, who was a truck driver, who hauled freight over the "old goat trail" from Valdez to Fairbanks. So when he landed his first job at the tender age of seven, he worked it diligently, delivering the Anchorage Daily News until he was 17 years old.

"It was a long-term job--seven days a week for a half an hour (a day), beginning at 5 a.m. The 5 a.m. wakeup is tough anyway, but as a young kid you can just imagine--builds character," he said.

His next big break came with a job from R & M Consultants Inc., an engineering firm in Anchorage. Jordan said he started working as an expediter for R & M when he was 15. After high school, Jordan went to engineering school at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He continued working for R & M during his summer breaks from engineering school. He received a bachelor's of science degree in civil engineering in 1977. After graduation he worked for R & M for two more years while he was in graduate school and in 1979 was awarded a master's of science degree from MIT. He then went to work as the senior project engineer for Arco Alaska Inc., now Phillips Alaska Inc.

In the four-year span between 1980 and 1984, he oversaw more than $1 billion in...