Tanadgusix Corporation: Building expertise to benefit St. Paul.

• Author: Anderson, Tasha
• Position: 2017 Top 49ers

Tanadgusix Corporation (TDX) CEO Ron Philemonoff recalls hearing about the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA) in grade school. "Our teachers, who naturally tracked the news, were teaching us and said, 'You know the lands claims is happening. You guys, when you grow up and get your education, are going to be the ones running these companies,'" he says. It was prophetic for Philemonoff, who has served in a management role at TDX since 1981. "That was my first introduction: the lands claims are coming, there's going to be corporations and businesses for you guys to run, and you need to be ready for it."

Building TDX

As was typical for many Alaska Native youth at the time, Philemonoff left Alaska for high school, which he attended in Salem, Oregon. ANCSA passed while he was in high school in 1971, which is when he enrolled as a shareholder. He also attended college in Oregon, originally pursuing a career as an electrical engineer before switching to a business management major.

The new direction was inspired, in part, by a job offer. "That's about the time when the pipeline [construction] ended and the economy was in a downturn. The FAA wanted me to come work for them; they wanted me to drop out of school and said, 'We'll train you; come work for us as a government employee in the remote sites around the state of Alaska.' That's when I realized electrical engineering is probably not a field I want to be in. I don't want to be out in the middle of nowhere working on a FAA tower," Philemonoff laughs. "Plus the economy wasn't good, so I switched to business [as a degree]."

In 1978 Philemonoff graduated from college, and the same year he gained a seat on the TDX Board of Directors. "By then I knew I needed to be involved with our village corporation." TDX is the corporation for the village of St. Paul on St. Paul Island, one of the Pribilof Islands located in the Bering Sea approximately 250 miles north of the Aleutian Chain. Philemonoff served on the Board from 1978 until 1981. "By 1981 it became clear that the company wasn't going well and that a change in leadership needed to happen," he says. "I stepped up and said, 'Ok, I'll try and run it.'"

Since then, Philemonoff says, TDX has been a stable corporation. "We're effective in maintaining a stable board, and we did turn around the company from losing half a million [dollars] a year to breaking even to eventually making a profit." When Philemonoff stepped into a leadership role in the...