Spanning far beyond the borders of its region.

• Author: Swagel, Will
• Position: Sealaska Corp.

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Most every American is familiar with the blue plastic tops on bottles of Liquid Tide laundry detergent. These caps are made for Proctor and Gamble by Nypro Kanaak, a full-service plastic manufacturing company with facilities in Alabama, Iowa and Guadalajara, Mexico. Nypro Kanaak happens to be a subsidiary of Sealaska Corp., the regional ANCSA corporation for Southeast Alaska.

This June, executives of proctor and Gamble and Kraft Foods accepted an invitation to Celebration 2012, a huge gathering of Tlingit and other Southeast tribes held every two years in Juneau. There, the Fortune 100 company reps were introduced to--and had the chance to meet--some of Sealaska's shareholders who attended Celebration. Afterward, the executives were flown around to various Southeast villages to meet even more.

"We wanted them to understand us better as a supplier," says Sealaska's chief executive officer and president Chris McNeil. "It was important for them to understand the broader heritage of Alaska Native Corporations and show them what we actually do with the profits that we make from their products.

"Their reaction was overwhelmingly positive," he says. "They did not expect both the breadth and the intensity of the cultural experience. Their feedback made it all the way back into the corporate communications of these companies."

Sealaska is involved in forest products, silviculture, land management, financial investment, plastic molding and manufacturing, information technology, construction aggregates, environmental remediation, consulting, construction, security services and cultural preservation. Its $259.49 million in revenues in 2011 ($223.8 million in 2010) ranked it 14th on ABM's Top 49ers for 2012.

Sealaska has more than 20,000 tribal/ member shareholders. About 4,000 new shareholders were added to the rolls in 2007 (with life estate stock), including those who had missed the original 1971 enrollment because of military service or other reasons, and those who were born after 1971. Sealaska is one of only four regional corporations to open the doors to descendants.

"The Board of Directors wanted to make sure there was intergenerational ownership, participation and identity with the Sealaska Corp. and the ownership of our land," McNeil says.

"And now we see it everywhere," he says. "When we have meetings in the communities, whether in a village or Seattle or Anchorage--that connection with the land from a cultural...