here’s no such thing as bad weather, only bad clothing. The Norwegian adage is wise advice for Alaskans too. Workers at the Prudhoe Bay oil fields 250 miles north of the Arctic Circle have learned through experience how true the saying is.

Equipped with their employer’s list of required gear, new hires boarding a plane in Anchorage for their hitch on the North Slope may be barred from travel without packing the proper warm clothing and footwear.

“You have to have your standard Arctic gear to fly north during certain times of the season, otherwise they may not let you board,” says Brian Anderson, former oil rig worker for Anchorage-based Delta Constructors and now responsible for gear procurement.

ardiology keeps the lights on at Dr. Gene Quinn’s office, yet the director of quality and population health for Alaska Heart and Vascular Institute (AHVI) has more ambitious goals.

“My work since residency has really focused on how we build health systems that do a good job, that provide quality of care,” Quinn says. “How do you organize a system of care that does what’s right for the patient? How do we make the right thing, the easiest thing to do?”

shes to ashes, dust to dust… tends to expend a lot of energy and chemicals when disposing of the deceased. Rachel Bernhardt has other ideas. The founder and owner of Flameless Cremation Services—an Anchorage business that bids beloved pets a final farewell with a mixture of potash and water—hopes to bring additional environmentally friendly burial options to the community.

“I worked with organ and tissue donation programs for many years, which taught me a lot about the intersection of healthcare and death care,” says Bernhardt. “That led to conversations with people about their feelings about death. It seemed like no one was particularly satisfied with the current burial and cremation processes. Although there is an illusion of choice, there really aren’t many choices currently available.”

nique among our Best of Alaska Business categories, the Best Corporate Citizens are unranked and selected both through reader feedback and the editorial team’s knowledge of how these companies support the communities in which they operate. In addition to the three winners below, presented here in no particular order, every company nominated by one of our readers is also listed. In large and small communities across the state, our readers have taken notice that these businesses are in it for more than just the bottom line.

GCI donates $2 million annually in cash, services, products, scholarships, and grants to more than 150 Alaska nonprofits, including $100,000 earmarked for suicide prevention programs each year. According to one reader, “They deal with the most communities on the daily, by far, and work hard to represent all Alaskans,” and another states: “[GCI] really works with local folk and government and tribes to ensure their needs are always considered.”

In Southeast, another underwater wonder: coastal caves where Ice Age people may have lived. An expedition last summer scanned the area to identify archaeological sites, and this research inspired artist Emily Longbrake’s design of this month’s cover.

Mixing science with whimsy, Longbrake also patterned her design after illustrator Ed Emberley’s Caldecott Medal-winning works and the Where’s Waldo series by Martin Hanford. Packed with detail, such images dare viewers to scrutinize every square inch. In that vein, Longbrake populated a private fantasy world, or “paracosm” as she calls it, with puckish, offbeat examples of the Best of Alaska Business at work.

very year, Alaskans nominate businesses as the best among their ranks, and a handful of those have consistently made the cut.

Among the standouts are Moose’s Tooth, celebrated as the Best Pizzeria; 49th State Brewing, renowned as the Best Brewery; Kaladi Brothers Coffee, honored as the Best Coffee Spot; and First National Bank Alaska, acclaimed as the Best Place to Work (250+ Employees).

These Best of Alaska Business (BOAB) dynasties set the standard for excellence in their fields, earning loyalty and admiration from customers and employees alike through staff development, community involvement, and exceptional customer service.

t’s not easy to start a new business, and it’s even more difficult to make a big impression in the first year. Yet three Alaska companies—Aurora Security, Glow Events AK, and Peak Integrated Contracting—have impressed clients enough that they’ve been named the Best Startups in Alaska Business magazine’s Best of Alaska Business awards.

“Working for that size of corporate entity, there’s really no loyalty, which makes sense as it is a for-profit business,” Lance Lacey says. “But for me to continue to grow to the regional vice-president level, it required me to leave Alaska, and I wasn’t willing to sacrifice time with my kids for professional growth. They’re here, so I’m here.”

words were flying off the table before the Kids Business Fair officially opened. Demand clearly outstripped supply, but rather than adjust the $3 price and possibly discourage further sales, the vendor ramped up production to fill back-ordered purchases. And his grandfather helped.

Breck’s Swords was one of two dozen or so merchants set up at The Workshop, a nonprofit community space in South Anchorage. As the only seller of handmade toys, young Breck cornered the market. He and his papa cranked out cardboard cutlasses wrapped in gray tape. Breck found the sword design online after rejecting his first idea for making and selling rubber band-powered toothpick shooters. Even the youngest entrepreneurs must be conscious of product liability.

n the olden days, when anybody needed to buy a product or find a service, they turned to the Yellow Pages. From accountants to yard services and everything in between, the original business directory had it all, neatly categorized.

The Yellow Pages still exist, of course, even as mobile business directories have proliferated online. Some, like the State of Alaska’s Made in Alaska directory or the Alaska Small Business Development Center’s (SBDC) BuyAlaska Program, are broad, with Alaskan-owned being the primary qualification for inclusion. Other directories focus on a niche like Alaskan-grown produce, Indigenous art, or travel, while Alaska Native corporations have created directories specifically for shareholder-owned businesses.

n April, the Matanuska-Susitna Borough Assembly repealed a business license requirement. The Mat-Su began requiring business licenses in 1995 when the borough sought to make up for lost revenues after having difficulty collecting personal property tax on airplanes, trailers, and snowmachines. For the past twenty-nine years, borough businesses paid $100 for a license that they renewed every two years.

“Since that time, people would go online and complete the paperwork to print this business license,” says Borough Mayor Edna DeVries. “It wasn’t a hands-on process that required people to come into the office. But looking into the issue, we found that we had not been using any of that information for economic development.”

The license fee brought in about $500,000 for the borough each year, or less than 1 percent of its budget. About $90,000 covered part of the wages and benefits for multiple staffers to administer the program, mainly by comparing records against state and city licenses.

usinesses buy and sell goods and services all the time. Occasionally the company itself is on the table. An owner might be liquidating the enterprise, handing it over to a new generation, or expanding through an acquisition—or an entrepreneur is ready to enter the game by purchasing an established operation. An array of professionals are available to help ensure a smooth exchange and a fair deal for both sides.

A good place to start is the Alaska Small Business Development Center (SBDC). “We have business expertise, numerous resources, and access to a network of professionals to refer clients to for help with legal, financial, and other issues,” says Carlos Machuca, director of the Alaska SBDC Anchorage office.

laska is a place of stories. White Fang by Jack London. Fire and Ice by Dana Stabenow. Ordinary Wolves by Seth Kantner. Blonde Indian by Ernestine Hayes. The Raven’s Gift by Don Rearden. The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey. Into Great Silence by Eva Saulitis. Second Nature by Chaun Ballard. Thousands more titles exist.

“Alaskan authors share a literary genealogy,” says Sandra Kleven, who runs Cirque Press. She invests in book-length, consequential literature written by Alaskans, as do Nate Bauer and Jeremy Pataky, who also acquire books for local publishers—the University of Alaska (UA) Press and Porphyry Press, respectively. Peggy Shumaker edits the Alaska Literary Series, published by UA Press, and is the founding editor of Boreal Books, an imprint of Red Hen Press. To Kleven’s point, these four people along with many other Alaskans form a literary family.

ust below the view of Alaska’s amazing landscape is an entirely different world. The state’s seascape offers stunning sights—and local dive and scuba shops are thriving because of them.

“When people think of Alaska, they think of wolves and moose and caribou, but Alaska is not just limited to terrestrial animals,” says Kristopher Baumann, service manager and instructor at Dive Alaska in Anchorage. “You never know what you’re going to see underwater. There are interesting and plain weird creatures out there, and they give you a much greater appreciation for Alaska. You see things that most people rarely get to see.”

“We have tons of diverse marine life, including big critters like whales, sea lions, and seals, as well as small critters that you wouldn’t see in the tropics or anywhere else,” agrees Kate Sample of Test the Waters Dive Shop, six miles south of Fairbanks. “We had an instructor from Hawai’i take students out on a boat in Valdez, and he came back stunned, saying, ‘So this is why people dive in Alaska!’”

e took off from Anchorage and turned south, climbing to cross the inlet, my dad at the controls of our Cessna.

The engine started sputtering.

We were a thousand feet above open water water in a single-engine plane.

I was scared.

Thoughts flashed through my mind. Had I told my mom I love her? What would it feel like to land in water? Did I have clean underwear on?

My dad, though, was calm and collected. He checked gauges, flipped switches, and pulled controls. The engine smoothed out, and we continued our flight.

Disaster averted.

My dad flew the plane all the time. He knew the engine and how it ran. Even when it stumbled, he knew it could continue producing power. He knew how much throttle he could add. He knew what the engine was capable of because he ran it regularly.

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