By Margaret Bauman
Alaska Journal of Commerce

As the new head of one of the largest Native village corporations in Alaska, Ana Hoffman has a single goal: maintain steady growth and focus on profitable operations to assure continuing dividend distributions to shareholders.

Hoffman, the first woman to serve as president of Bethel Native Corp., stepped up on Jan. 1 from the post of chief operating officer to oversee the Yupik Eskimo firm that holds subsidiaries engaged in businesses from real estate to health care.

Former BNC president Marc Stemp said he would continue in a mentoring role to Hoffman and the board of directors until his retirement, set for May 31. Hoffman said that Stemp included the board of directors in the transition plans.

"It helps with our outlook, and for the people who look to BNC as a business partner, to see we are planning well in advance for continued operations," she said

Hoffman is a shareholder of the village corporation. While other shareholders have run the company before, it has never been under the official title of president, she said.

Hoffman, a lifelong resident of Bethel, became a shareholder in the late 1990s, when she inherited stock left to her by her mother. She began her college studies at Smith College, a prestigious liberal arts college for women in Northhampton, Mass., a school that several other women in her family have attended. After a year at Smith, she opted to transfer to Stanford University in California, which was closer to home. She went on to earn a master's degree in rural development from the University of Alaska at Fairbanks.

Hoffman said she is optimistic about BNC's current investments.

BNC's corporate headquarters in Bethel employ about a dozen people, including several shareholders.

"We are not a huge employer here in Bethel, because we focus on profitability," Hoffman said. "We want to keep things lean as far as overhead, and provide benefits to shareholders through the dividend."

BNC distributed dividends to shareholders every December. "Over the last few years, there has been a steady growth in the amount per share," Hoffman said. "This past year it was $2 per share."

The corporation, one of more than 200 established under the 1971 Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act, serves some 2,000 shareholders, many of who live in Bethel or within the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta in Western Alaska.

Bethel, population about 5,900, lies at the mouth of the Kuskokwim River, 40 miles inland from the Bering Sea. The second-class city serves as the regional center for 56 villages of the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta.

One of the corporation's subsidiaries, BNC International Inc., is engaged primarily in environmental cleanup work on federal properties, including military and Federal Aviation Administration sites, Hoffman said. BNC International Inc., is in the process of phasing out of the federal Small Business Administration's 8(a)-certified business development program for socially and economically disadvantaged firms. BNCI has been operating for a number of years and has successfully established those contracts, Hoffman said.

Subsidiary Bethel Services, still active as an 8(a)-certified firm, is engaged in federal government contract construction jobs and health care. Under a contract awarded last October, Bethel services, partnered with Spectrum Health Care Resources, is providing health care services for the Air Force Academy at Colorado Springs, Colo.

A third subsidiary, Bethel Engineering and Technology Services Inc., is focusing more on engineering services and is working to phase out of environmental cleanup work, she said. Through this firm the village corporation has a good opportunity to expand into health care work, Hoffman said.