Jody Oyen (R)
Remora Co-founders
Contents
Features
By Isaac Stone Simonelli
Vitus Energy Lands in Anchorage
By Alexandra Kay
By Rachael Kvapil
By Isaac Stone Simonelli
By Isaac Stone Simonelli
By Isaac Stone Simonelli
Vitus Energy Lands in Anchorage
By Alexandra Kay
By Rachael Kvapil
Quick Reads
About The Cover
From the Editor
With that clearly established, I’d like to write a few words about Don Young. Like many of the policy decisions he was involved in, Young was a foundational fixture in the Alaska landscape, and he was instrumental in building the Alaska that we know today. Whether or not one agreed with his decisions, his longevity in the US House of Representatives and the influence he was able to build over nearly five decades of holding office were assets to Alaska that cannot be easily replaced.
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ver the last fifty years, Alaska Native corporations (ANCs) have become a vital part of the state’s economy. They represent a variety of industries, including construction, environmental services, government contracting, natural resource development, technology services, and real estate. They also play a major role in tourism.
Like many economic sectors, the COVID-19 pandemic slammed the Alaska tourism industry. The last couple of seasons interrupted an emerging new direction involving cultural tourism.
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iability insurance is like a blanket that keeps out the chilly drafts of lawsuits for bodily injury or property damage. The types of claims are changing in the days of COVID-19, leading to a growing demand for liability insurance, which leads in turn to rising rates and policies with fewer bells and whistles. The elevated costs and more restrictive coverages in Alaska indicate a hardening market, according to experts. However, Alaska businesses can implement strategies to better position themselves to navigate the evolving landscape of liability issues.
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he Alaska Army National Guard is giving away property. Dozens of buildings across the state are no longer needed. The divestiture program began in 2013 with a building given to Shaktoolik Native Corporation, and in 2021 more sites were handed over to communities than in any single year.
A change in Department of Defense (DOD) mission requirements in 2011 meant much of the National Guard’s property was no longer necessary. Among these facilities were the Federal Scout Readiness Centers, which were put in place during the Cold War as part of early warning measures and strategic defense. In many ways, leaders at the time viewed Alaska as a “tripwire” for any Soviet aggression in the Arctic that directly threatened North America.
avigating supply chain problems during the COVID-19 pandemic has been extremely challenging. But in true Alaska fashion, the transportation industry has worked together to keep freight moving—despite logistical and production issues occurring around the globe, and severe labor shortages of drivers, mariners, pilots, operators, and mechanics. “I’m proud to be part of the team that was able to keep the supply chain from Seattle/Tacoma to Alaska moving with little to no disruption” says Paul Friese, Vice President for Lynden Transport, part of the Lynden family of companies.
Major credit goes to Lynden’s drivers, mechanics, pilots, mariners, load masters, operations teams, customer service representatives, and many other employees who have continually stepped up and worked through challenges to ensure Alaskan communities get the supplies they need. “We want to extend a big thank you to all our employees; they keep Alaska open,” Friese says.
s we move into a new phase of pandemic-induced life, I am reflecting on where we have been—from life quakes to the Great Resignation—and considering what comes next for our workplaces.
“Life quakes” is what we called the personal experiences we saw all around us in the early part of the COVID-19 pandemic. Isolation, despair, divorce, job loss, the childcare crisis, isolation of the elderly—this list is inadequate in naming the cracks and chasms that appeared over the last two years. We watched as this slow-motion disaster ripped through our lives at breathtaking speed, rendering time almost irrelevant and eliminating the boundaries between our personal lives and our daily workplace experiences.
Vitus Energy
ellow stripes on former Shell gas stations in Anchorage gave way in 2022 to a new color scheme: the gray and orange logo of Vitus Energy. The name evokes the sea: not just Vitus Bering, the Danish navigator who put Alaska on European maps in 1741, but Vitus Energy, the company formed in 2009 to transport fuel to Western Alaska villages by barge.
Yet here is Vitus Energy at Tudor Road and Arctic Boulevard, as of January, and then at Northern Lights Boulevard and Minnesota Drive in March—far from shore. Though the company is a newcomer to Anchorage drivers gassing up their cars and trucks, Vitus Energy is no stranger to retail fuel after steadily growing through a decade of wholesaling.
nless something moves, it stays put. Yes, that’s a rather trite observation about transportation, but give me a break. I’m a can.
Hello! My name is JGB, and I’m hosting this month’s special section. I realize it’s a little unusual for a ginger beer to present articles about transportation, but if anyone could do the job, I can.
Get it?
My story speaks for itself. All of my ingredients and packaging had to be transported to my birthplace, the Broken Tooth Brewery in Anchorage. From there, I had to be transported to a store shelf. And when I’m recycled, I go back onto trucks, ships, and trains to begin my new life. More than once, people told me they don’t believe aluminum recycling happens in Anchorage. Well, not with that attitude!
emoras are small fish that cling to larger animals for a free ride. Their name comes from a Latin word meaning “to hinder or delay,” but the Alaskans who’ve taken the fish as their mascot are doing exactly the opposite. They’ve started a company to streamline cargo shipments.
With backgrounds in aviation and logistics, co-founders Rebecca Clark and Jody Oyen created Remora to pair cargo or passengers with the most appropriate carrier.
“Jody and I started Remora while I was the managing director of Arctic On-Demand [AOD] because we saw a market that the company was missing and also the need for a simplified tool,” Clark explains. The centerpiece of Remora is an app that helps clients schedule cargo and passenger flights on planes that have available space.
emoras are small fish that cling to larger animals for a free ride. Their name comes from a Latin word meaning “to hinder or delay,” but the Alaskans who’ve taken the fish as their mascot are doing exactly the opposite. They’ve started a company to streamline cargo shipments.
With backgrounds in aviation and logistics, co-founders Rebecca Clark and Jody Oyen created Remora to pair cargo or passengers with the most appropriate carrier.
“Jody and I started Remora while I was the managing director of Arctic On-Demand [AOD] because we saw a market that the company was missing and also the need for a simplified tool,” Clark explains. The centerpiece of Remora is an app that helps clients schedule cargo and passenger flights on planes that have available space.
Matson, Inc. plays a crucial role in Hawaii, Alaska, Guam, and the other regions where it operates. The company’s ships transport essential cargo that people depend on to sustain their lives. As such, Matson is committed to providing good—and easy—solutions to meet the needs of the markets it serves. “Our mission is to move freight better than anyone,” says Bal Dreyfus, Matson’s senior vice president, Alaska.
Founded in San Francisco in 1882, Matson (NYSE: MATX) is a leading provider of ocean transportation and logistics services in and around the Pacific. With 4,200 employees managing logistics across multiple time zones, the company provides a critical lifeline to the non-contiguous US economies of Hawaii, Alaska, and Guam, as well as to other island economies in Micronesia. Matson also operates premium, expedited services from China to the US West Coast; provides service to Okinawa, Japan and various islands in the South Pacific; and operates an international export service from Dutch Harbor to Asia.
pecialty truck and trailer suppliers are not short on ingenuity. In a state where hauling needs are as unique as snowflakes and nearly as abundant, the skill to recognize a problem and engineer a solution is rarely far away.
Need a refrigerated storage facility to preserve a community’s whale meat? No problem. Massive snowplow/grader/sanding vehicle? Easy-peasy. Trailer that can handle 70 tons of mining waste and dump it in precisely the right spot, every time? Can do.
Take, for example, Bob’s Services. Its “BSI” logo is visible on mud flaps of commercial vehicles all around Alaska. The company predates statehood: it’s been in business since 1952, when founder Bob Brown started moving houses for people. Sales manager Kate Forster says it wasn’t long before people started coming to Brown to see if he could help them create a custom truck. One conversion at a time, Brown built a reputation on bringing people’s truck dreams to life, whether that was adapting pickups to drive on the Alaska Railroad or outfitting trucks with snowplows and sanders for the Alaska Department of Transportation & Public Facilities (DOT&PF) crew to use to keep roads clear.
While Bob’s Services is now in its second generation of Brown ownership and operations, the commitment to getting the job done—and done well—remains the same.
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Images by Waliszek.
Images by Waliszek.
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Connecting the World to Alaska.
Connecting the World to Alaska.
almon are famous for their incredible lifelong journey, from smolt leaving their natal river to roam in saltwater until their adult return, against the current, to their spawning stream. If a human snags them along the way, they undergo another voyage, almost as miraculous.
reas of Alaska accessible only by airplane have elevated Bush pilots into heroes and contributed to the state having the most aircraft per capita, by far. One in fifty-eight Alaskans holds a pilot’s license, practically a necessity when 82 percent of communities are isolated except by air. Rural Alaska’s dependence on aviation is well understood, yet air travel has also shaped the state’s biggest city. Downtown Anchorage is literally defined by the edge of Delaney Park, formerly the city’s first airstrip. Beyond its reputation as the Air Crossroads of the World, Anchorage also sits at the crossroads of general aviation.
“The Anchorage airspace is so complicated that the Federal Aviation Administration has come up with special rules and procedures just to operate inside the Anchorage airspace,” says Adam White, who manages government and legislative affairs for the Alaska Airmen’s Association. “We’ve got F-22s and Super Cubs in the same air space as 747s coming in. It’s crazy!”
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Spotting trends and navigating turbulent waters can’t happen from behind a desk. The insights come when we put on our hard hats and meet our clients where they are.
We don’t just settle on knowing your industry. We live it.
Spotting trends and navigating turbulent waters can’t happen from behind a desk. The insights come when we put on our hard hats and meet our clients where they are.
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laska Business Publishing Co. believes in supporting the business community in Alaska and encouraging economic development. A vital component of that growth relies on having a vibrant and skilled labor force.
We are excited to introduce you to the Alaska Business Career Center, an online community where professionals can tap into the local job market and businesses can post their career opportunities. The Career Center is a robust resource that provides ample opportunity for growth. For job seekers, the Career Center provides a chance to receive a free resume review, local market career insights, and the opportunity to post a resume for locally registered human resource professionals to review.
At our consolidation center—just minutes from the Port of Tacoma—we load dedicated containers to each of our final-mile service centers, eliminating extra handling and costly delays.
ere I sit on my shelf. I’m cold, as I should be. My contents are pasteurized, but I contain no preservatives, so my creator recommends that I be refrigerated.
I am a 12-ounce can of ginger beer. Non-alcoholic, despite the name. A baby could drink me, except that my flavor is, well, challenging.
“I get that a lot,” says my creator, Mike Jipping. People ask him, ‘Why would you do something so niche?’ He answers, “I’m first to admit that I have a crazy streak in me.”
ere I sit on my shelf. I’m cold, as I should be. My contents are pasteurized, but I contain no preservatives, so my creator recommends that I be refrigerated.
I am a 12-ounce can of ginger beer. Non-alcoholic, despite the name. A baby could drink me, except that my flavor is, well, challenging.
“I get that a lot,” says my creator, Mike Jipping. People ask him, ‘Why would you do something so niche?’ He answers, “I’m first to admit that I have a crazy streak in me.”
fter two not-so-great travel years as the result of a worldwide pandemic, people are ready to hit the highway—and some of them plan to do it in style. Traveling by RV (recreational vehicles, whether called motorhomes, campers, or caravans) is quickly growing in popularity, and for many people, it’s the perfect way to visit Alaska’s road-accessible attractions.
“RVing is a great way to get out and enjoy Alaska; it’s nice because you don’t have to be on a schedule, and you can quickly change plans if the weather isn’t cooperating,” says Shanna Johnson of Safe RV Travels in south Anchorage. “Not to mention that you don’t have to worry about sleeping in a tent in bear country.”
oats are holes in the water that owners throw money into, the saying goes. That money pays not just for operating a vessel but for customizing it. When a stock model can’t get the job done, it’s time to call on the skills of a naval architect.
Boat customization isn’t a process to jump into lightly. Time and money are both major investments in a start-to-finish project. Any naval architect will happily work with a client to design and bid out a custom vessel; a really good one will tell you when customization isn’t absolutely necessary.
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ink salmon are booming. That’s great for humpies, but perhaps not so great for every other species of salmon in Alaska. Indirect evidence suggests competition among species may have been compounded by the changing ocean climate, but the case is far from closed.
“There’s a lot of evidence that abundant pink salmon in the North Pacific are having ecosystem-scale impacts that include changes in the growth rates of different salmon populations of different species from different places,” says NOAA scientist Nate Mantua, based on a review of the scientific literature, including the work of Gregory Ruggerone.
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Economic Indicators
504,219 barrels
0.5% change from previous month
4/28/22
Source: Alaska Department of Natural Resources
$111.95 per barrel
6.5% change from previous month
Source: Alaska Department of Natural Resources
361,800 Labor Force
5.0% Unemployment
Source: US Bureau of Labor Statistics
With the retirement of Bal Dreyfus from Matson, effective July 1, the shipping company named Vic Angoco to succeed him as Senior Vice President, Alaska. Currently responsible for Matson’s Hawaii, Guam, Micronesia, and South Pacific operations as senior vice president, Pacific, Angoco joined Matson in 1996 as operations manager on Guam and quickly rose through the ranks in sales, customer service, and operations management positions. He was promoted to his current position in 2010.
Matson also promoted the director of Alaska terminal operations, Jennifer Tungul, to Vice President, Operations for Alaska. In her new position, Tungul has primary management responsibility for Matson’s terminal operations in Anchorage, Kodiak, and Dutch Harbor. Tungul joined Matson’s Alaska operations in 2002 and has served in a series of finance and operations leadership roles, including terminal manager in Dutch Harbor. She was promoted to general manager for Dutch Harbor in 2019 and to her current position later that same year.
Alaska Trends
ehicles are a home away from home—or rather a home between home and anywhere else. They are liminal spaces, neither origin nor destination, and only when in motion do they fulfill their teleological potential. Vehicles also have engines that go VROOM!
In this edition of Alaska Trends, we put some numbers on the impact of vehicles, particularly land vehicles. To start with, how many roads are there? The Alaska Department of Transportation and Public Facilities (DOT&PF) classifies pavement and its maintenance jurisdiction; all but 18.6 miles of the 2,019 miles of interstate-grade highways and principal arterials are the state’s direct responsibility.
DOT&PF also tracks usage of roads in terms of millions of vehicle miles, which doesn’t exactly parallel the population registered with the Alaska Division of Motor Vehicles. That figure seems to reveal the long shadow of the statewide economic recession, whereas miles traveled reflects the sudden stay at home in 2020. The fuel consumption trend is flatter, perhaps thanks to greater efficiency per mile. The US Department of Energy’s Alternative Fuels Data Center tracks carbon emissions, with some surprising results for gasoline-hybrid cars versus plug-in hybrids that draw grid electricity.
Let’s fasten seatbelts and find out what’s under the hood.
At a Glance
Setting the Table: The Transforming Power of Hospitality in Business by Danny Meyer.
What charity or cause are you passionate about?
United Way, Smithsonian [served on the national board], The Alaska Community Foundation.
If you could domesticate a wild animal, what animal would it be?
I’ve always been interested in zebras.
What’s the most daring thing you’ve ever done?
Hmm. Married my husband [she laughs].
What’s your greatest extravagance?
Buying a vineyard.
At a Glance
Setting the Table: The Transforming Power of Hospitality in Business by Danny Meyer.
What charity or cause are you passionate about?
United Way, Smithsonian [served on the national board], The Alaska Community Foundation.
If you could domesticate a wild animal, what animal would it be?
I’ve always been interested in zebras.
What’s the most daring thing you’ve ever done?
Hmm. Married my husband [she laughs].
What’s your greatest extravagance?
Buying a vineyard.
Off the Cuff
banker must be careful where she invests her own money to avoid competing with her customers. Therefore, Betsy Lawer put her wealth in Napa Valley grapes. Her two vineyards in Calistoga, California, operate in her absence most of the year, though. Her annual vacation time is capped at six weeks. She should talk to her boss about that.
Lawer has to “walk the walk,” she says. As a member of the Cuddy family, she followed her father and brother as President of First National Bank Alaska in 2013. She also followed her mother and grandmother into the Alaska Women’s Hall of Fame.
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Thank you to Lynden employees around the state for keeping Alaska’s supply chains operating as usual, during a very unusual year. Your dedication, flexibility, and ingenuity was critical to ensuring fellow Alaskans had the essential supplies they needed, when they needed them. We look forward to a great year ahead and will continue to provide multi-modal transportation and logistics solutions across all of Alaska, from Ketchikan to Kaktovik!