evenue, in absolute terms, is the prime consideration for ranking the Top 49ers. As a snapshot of annual performance, it’s a reasonable measure of relative success. However, the first-order derivative of revenue growth is a meaningful metric at a wider range of scales. While earning more dollars, year over year, than half of the other companies on the list is impressive, the enormous head start for the mightiest of the mighty is an important consideration.

In percentage terms, then, double-digit growth is a signal of a blazing star on the rise. On this year’s list, eight companies posted revenue at least 20 percent higher than the year before. Northrim Bank’s 24 percent growth reflects its backing of Alaskans and their businesses, while oil and gas activity benefited Alaskan-owned industry support firms, boosting Udelhoeven Oilfield System Services by 24 percent and Colville by a chart-topping 60 percent. Basking in the glow, the construction sector did well in 2024, with Cornerstone General Contractors up by 55 percent and Watterson Construction up by 30 percent. Federal infrastructure funding helped pump that activity, and government contracting lifted the revenues of Native corporations, along with savvy strategic maneuvers. Village corporations Huna Totem and Choggiung, Ltd. saw growth of 20 percent and 25 percent, respectively, and Copper River Management Company (CRMC), the for-profit arm of the Native Village of Eyak (NVE), grew by 26 percent.

How’d they do it?

“It’s 100 percent culture” says CRMC CEO Kevin McLaughlin. “When you focus on culture and people, performance follows.”

Choggiung President and CEO Cameron Poindexter agrees. “This growth doesn’t come without an enormous amount of talented people,” he says.

Both CEOs say strategy also informed their growth. At CRMC, McLaughlin moved into the CEO role five years ago, just months into the COVID-19 pandemic. Even though many companies transitioned to remote work at the time, McLaughlin saw an immediate need to strengthen interorganizational communication and break down silos. “If nothing else, it was phone calls… non-stop making sure you were always touching somebody… [and] keeping those communication channels open,” he says. “To survive through a global pandemic, let alone thrive… we had to stay connected.”

As restrictions on in-person meetings eased, McLaughlin worked to ensure staff across CRMC’s multiple holdings met regularly. “It took coming together and literally bringing people to Chantilly [Virginia, site of the CRMC office where McLaughlin is based] to understand our ‘why.’” The answer is simple: the company works for the benefit of the tribe that owns it.

CRMC performs construction projects all over the United States, many for the US Department of Defense, as well maritime and IT work. This far-flung staff means it’s not always possible to have team meetings in Cordova or at its Anchorage headquarters, but McLaughlin says the company works hard to bring the culture of Eyak to its employees. This ranges from featuring NVE artists in corporate offices to sharing the Eyak Echo, the tribe’s newspaper, with employees in regular emails.

“Everybody is tied to the bottom line… knowing that we ultimately want to maximize profit for the tribe,” he says.

For Dillingham-based Choggiung, Poindexter says revenue growth builds on a five-year strategic plan the board developed two years ago, which sought to double the company’s size. “Growth for us means that we’re able to share more with more people,” he says. As the largest village corporation in the Bristol Bay region, he says, Choggiung has also seen significant growth in shareholders since Poindexter took the helm in 2017. From roughly 2,000 shareholders, the rolls have grown to more than 2,800.

“Our family has grown,” Poindexter says, which “requires us to be a larger business to be able to pay ever-increasing benefits to our shareholders and honor the purpose of Alaska Native corporations to promote the economic, cultural, and social advancement of our people.”

For 2024, Poindexter says most of the revenue growth came from Wood River Federal, which grew by $8.2 million (a 35 percent increase) and Bristol Industries, which grew by $32 million, a 17 percent increase. Most of Choggiung’s other companies had flat performance. The company’s 2024 revenue growth also included $19 million in grant funding to install a fiber internet line to Dillingham and Aleknagik.

“We intentionally put resources” to things Choggiung’s leaders wanted to see in the future, Poindexter says. “The growth gives us an opportunity to bid on more complex and larger projects. We’ve increased our profile, especially with our federal customers across the country.”

Cornerstone General Contractors also took a more strategic approach for 2024, says President Joe Jolley. Early in the year, it set a goal to reach a certain revenue target. “We quit thinking project to project and started thinking bigger, on an enterprise level,” he says.

Ultimately, Cornerstone decided to seek more work in three specific areas—Northwest, Interior, and Southeast—which allowed the company to achieve new economies of scale. “We planted flags in those three locations and made a commitment to stay in those locations,” Jolley says. For instance, Cornerstone teamed up with Alaska Commercial Contractors of Juneau, and this year the two began sharing offices in the capital city to facilitate projects in Southeast.

Like CRMC, investments in company culture also played a key role in Cornerstone’s growth, according to Jolley. “Our mission statement is to provide people with their best construction experience,” he says, noting that “people” encompasses employees, designers, subcontractors, and customers. “We spend a lot of time and energy thinking about how what we do affects those four different types of people… and how we can make their experience as good as we can.”

A key decision, he says, was hiring a director of people and culture to focus on the employee experience, ensure “top of market” compensation, and organize regular staff gatherings. “Folks really like working here, and that’s probably the single best thing that we could have done as a company to provide subcontractors, designers, and clients with their best experience,” Jolley says.

By investing in employees’ well-being, Jolley says Cornerstone can provide its other project partners and clients “with staff on their projects that love what they do and are well taken care of and have plenty of time and energy to worry about the projects and not worry about all the other things.”

All three CEOs speak most passionately about how their companies are sowing back into the communities they’re part of—whether returning value directly to shareholders or, in Cornerstone’s case, to the industry itself.

For CRMC, one such opportunity presented itself when the Cordova School District faced a significant financial shortfall as it planned for the 2024–2025 school year. Faced with a $1.5 million deficit for fiscal year 2025, the school district planned to cut its afterschool lunch program and after-school sports. When its leaders asked if NVE could help, the tribe agreed to cover the meals and extracurriculars through a $700,000 gift.

“It was extremely well received by our community, by village of Eyak and non-tribal members,” says Diane Ujioka, a lifelong NVE member who chairs the board of Alaska Native General Services, CRMC’s operating company. “It was a big boost to the community.”

Without the gift, children all over Cordova would have gone without the breakfasts and lunches the school district provides five days a week. “The number-one thing for learning is not being hungry or being distracted,” says McLaughlin. “It was pretty scary” when the school district feared they might have to cut such a service, he adds. “It affected the whole community of Cordova, not just the village of Eyak.”

Poindexter says Choggiung’s growth has also funded concrete benefits for people’s day-to-day life. “We’ve been able to make some really cool decisions based on our business performance for our shareholders,” he says. Over the last eight years, it has increased the shareholder dividend by 175 percent. It also issued a new class of shares to include descendants of the original shareholders. This added 400 new people to the rolls.

Choggiung’s revenue growth and profitability also funded a mix of new and expanded benefits for those shareholders. The corporation increased scholarships for “any form of higher education,” whether trade school, a certificate, or a degree program, Poindexter says.

Choggiung also added a bereavement benefit to cover up to $1,000 of funeral costs for shareholders or their spouses. And a new probate benefit, created in association with Bristol Bay Native Association, saves people costly travel to obtain documents needed for the inheritance of a deceased shareholder’s estate.

“You usually have to fly into Anchorage from rural Alaska to verify your identity in person” to get the necessary documents from the state, Poindexter says. But because Bristol Bay Native Association has a government-to-government relationship with the State of Alaska, it can order death certificates directly. The new probate benefit pays up to $1,000 for certificates for the whole family, he says, saving them time and money.

Jolley positions Cornerstone’s community contribution as developing a different way of doing construction. “I’ve been building buildings a long time and I could probably just keep doing that,” he says, “but we’re really looking to do something here that’s a bit more special than that… We want to build amazing projects with other people that enjoy building amazing projects and kind of flip the narrative on the construction industry, that it’s normally very adversarial, contentious, and stressful.”

As long as double-digit revenue growth continues, Jolley hopes to build “an enterprise of people that… love their jobs and love the people that they do their jobs with… and feel fulfilled and have a purpose,” he says. “We’re in the coolest industry in the state as far as I’m concerned: the building of Alaska.”