or companies that store, transport, or use hazardous materials—commonly known as hazmat—the most important response decisions are often made long before a spill, leak, or accident happens.

“Mobilizing response resources in Alaska presents unique challenges due to limited road access, reliance on air and marine transport, extreme weather conditions, and the need to transport and stage specialized equipment in remote areas,” says Matt Melton, Alaska general manager at Republic Services. “These factors can impact timing, safety, and overall logistics, particularly when disposal capacity for certain waste streams is limited.”

Hazardous materials include flammable products, such as gasoline and propane; corrosives, such as strong acids; toxic substances like pesticides and industrial chemicals; reactive or explosive materials; and radioactive substances used in medical or industrial settings. In business operations, these materials may appear in bulk tanks, drums, laboratories, maintenance shops, construction sites, transportation fleets, or legacy properties being redeveloped.

hat happens when a city with fewer than 300 residents becomes a major freight and tourism hub, despite being accessible only by boat, plane, or a one-lane highway/railroad tunnel managed on a strict schedule?

If you’re in the City of Whittier, you get busy. The city has two separate transportation planning efforts underway, including a safety action plan under the federal Safe Streets and Roads for All initiative, which focuses on improving safety for pedestrians, cyclists, motorists, and emergency responders. The second is Whittier Moves, the city’s transportation master plan, which serves as the long-term roadmap for growth.

These plans are designed to work in conjunction with the city’s Waterfront and Economic Development Plan, which encompasses the area from the dock on Passage Canal to the airport at the head of that waterway. The Alaska Railroad Corporation (ARRC) also has its own Whittier Terminal Master Plan. City Manager Jackie C. Wilde says that the city has worked closely with ARRC and the Alaska Department of Transportation and Public Facilities (DOT&PF) to ensure these planning efforts complement one another.

fter years of work in the wilderness, one of the state’s largest road projects in history is now more visible to drivers on the Sterling Highway.

The 15-mile highway construction project is only about halfway complete, and it may take four more years to fully finish. Even so, contractor Traylor Bros. achieved a major milestone this year by meticulously nudging a 928-foot steel girder bridge—which will become the highest bridge in Alaska, at 285 feet, and also the longest erected and launched bridge in the state—into place, creating the Juneau Creek Bridge near Cooper Landing.

“Near,” meaning about 1.6 miles due north of the Sterling Highway, or about 3 miles northwest of where the road gracefully curves across the vividly azure Kenai River in Cooper Landing proper. The approaches to the bridge are the next major phase.

assion is the path to excellence for several of this year’s Legal Elite.

“We love our work, we love the substance of what we do,” says John Kauffman, a partner with the Anchorage office of Stoel Rives LLP, which has twelve lawyers on the list of Alaska’s best lawyers, as nominated by their peers.

That kind of passion shapes how lawyers approach their work. “We spend a lot of time making sure that the attorneys in our office understand the context of a question that a client brings to us,” says Leslie Need, a partner at Landye Bennett Blumstein LLP, which has nineteen lawyers on the list.

At Schwabe, Williamson & Wyatt, the Anchorage office encourages passion for the work by giving associates “a good amount of responsibility” early in their careers, says Chris Slottee, a partner and co-leader of the firm’s Indian Country and Alaska Native corporations industry group. Schwabe, which has eleven people on the Legal Elite list, also gives its lawyers agency. “It lets you chart your own path… be master of your own destiny,” he says. “One thing Schwabe does well is empower its lawyers… to have the practice they want to have.”

Birch Horton Bittner & Cherot encourages its lawyers to pursue work that interests them, says one of its partners, Holly Wells. “We really encourage people to [do] training sessions or to expand their practice, explore their passions,” Wells says. The firm has twenty-one lawyers named to the Legal Elite for 2026.

laska’s operating environment shapes nearly every legal issue.

“Just the other week, I was talking with an out-of-state attorney about a voyage between two locations in Alaska,” shares Schwabe associate William Wright. “That attorney simply had no idea that the voyage he was discussing was farther than the entire Eastern Seaboard, from the northernmost point in Maine to Key West. Once he realized the scope of the undertaking, the conversation completely shifted. Having legal counsel who appreciates the unique practical difficulties experienced by the transportation industry in Alaska can make all the difference.”

Safety, environmental stewardship, and operational success go hand in hand in Alaska’s transportation sector. “The alternatives are injured workers or third parties, damaged equipment, environmental liability, and government enforcement actions,” says Wright. “Also, the regulations governing the transportation industry generally require high standards for safety and environmental precautions. Thus, clients are able to ensure safe and environmentally conscious operations without sacrificing a competitive advantage. I help my clients ensure their operations comply with the existing federal and state regulations, while keeping an eye on the horizon for changes that may affect their operations.”

silver tsunami is sweeping the nation, and attorneys in Alaska are part of the tide. The profession is aging, and practitioners are retiring faster than younger counterparts are ready to replace them. The median age of attorneys is 55, meaning half are less than a decade away from the traditional retirement age in the United States. The Alaska Bar Association (ABA) recognizes the need to attract more qualified attorneys, so the group is already taking steps to ensure the state has enough attorneys to maintain a robust legal system.

esponding to customers in a timely manner is critical for a business to maintain good relationships. But while customers expect quick answers and seamless service, meeting those expectations can be costly and time-consuming. That’s why more companies are turning to AI-powered applications to lend a digital hand.

From chatbots and virtual assistants to tools that help human agents respond faster and more consistently, AI is changing how businesses manage customer relationships. The question is no longer whether the technology has a place in customer service and support but which tools are worth adopting—and, just as important, how can companies use them without losing human touch?

ocktails crafted with locally foraged plants. Premium indoor golf simulators. Riverside glamping. Luxury gyms with high-end classes. A resort with a private lake and shareable plates.

These are all examples of urban amenities that celebrate what’s great about Alaska—and they’re cropping up in the Mat-Su, not its more densely populated neighbor, Anchorage.

ubscribers to newspapers and magazines have paid an upfront fee since weekly papers emerged in Germany in the early 1600s. When industrialization made copies affordable for pocket change, newsboys began selling to passersby. Publishers earned more revenue from advertising, and they still do.

Tandy Hogate has been selling subscriptions since the quarterly Sustainable Alaska Magazine launched in early 2025. She also runs Alaska Homestead Academy, a video streaming archive with monthly online classes that grew out of the Lady Homesteaders club.

She’s applying those models to Common Ground Alaska, her farm in Big Lake. The farm now charges admission for a visitor to harvest apples, melons, or berries, with a separate per-pound charge for the produce itself. Admission can be purchased as a subscription for unlimited access.

“Subscription retail” gained popularity around 2007, when Netflix pivoted from DVD-by-mail to online video, and the habit broke into brick-and-mortar during the 2010s. Common Ground Alaska was part of that economy before; it started as community-supported agriculture, where consumers buy a share of the harvest and receive deliveries of produce boxes. After Hogate and her husband, Gene, switched to a you-pick farm, they needed a few years before the logic of subscriptions came around again.

From car washes to movie theaters, a variety of Alaska businesses are embracing subscriptions as a sustainable stream of income.

very year, Alaskans buy roughly 2.3 million pounds of button mushrooms. They actually eat about 1.6 million pounds. The rest goes brown, slimy, and straight into the trash—casualties of a supply chain that makes a slow journey north before it ever reaches a grocery store.

Alaska’s short growing season isn’t much of a barrier to shade-loving fungi, raising the question of why more Alaskans aren’t growing mushrooms themselves. A few years ago, more people were. Mushroom cultivators were popping up like—well, like mushrooms after a good rain: a Juneau mushroom farmer, a grower in Homer selling shiitakes, an operation in South Anchorage, a Fairbanks cultivator. Add two farms that have become the closest thing Alaska has to mushroom institutions—Far North Fungi in Chugiak and Boreal Woods in Fairbanks—and the industry was trending up.

orruption within a business setting is often just seen as bad people doing bad things, but the impact can be greater than just a few publicly prosecuted crimes.

Defining it is challenging because corruption is an umbrella concept, not a universally understood and defined crime. At its core, business corruption is the abuse of entrusted power and position for private gain, which undermines fair competition, destroys organizational culture, erodes public trust, and can lead to significant financial and legal consequences. Since legal definitions risk being struck down for vagueness, lawmakers and international bodies rely on prosecuting specific, clearly identifiable acts, such as bribery, embezzlement, extortion, and nepotism, rather than the underlying corruption itself.

Business corruption is also difficult to measure. US Department of Justice prosecutions, and therefore criminal convictions, for white-collar crime have decreased over the last ten years. Other data tell a different story; according to World Bank Enterprise Surveys in 2024, 2.9 percent of US firms say corruption is a big problem for them and a very severe issue for their operations, and over the past ten years the United States has steadily declined on Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index, falling from 16th place (among the least corrupt countries) to a worse ranking of 29th.

laska has a workforce shortage across almost every sector. We pour energy into recruiting to our industries and to the state, which matters. But without equal effort in retention, we’ll simply churn through employees. To reach our potential, Alaska companies must keep the people they already have so they build their career here.

Most executives assume the way to do that is to pay and promote. Pay matters, but it’s the floor. If people don’t feel fairly compensated, they’ll leave. But once that bar is met, money stops being a lever.

Advancement is similar. It matters, but it isn’t what people are really after. When employees are asked what they want, moving up the ladder is dead last. Instead, they want contribution, skills, confidence, and autonomy. This is true across every age group, every level, and every industry studied.

So how do you uncover what actually drives someone? It starts with a conversation.