Decades of Achievement with Lasting Results

According to Cuddy’s daughter, Betsy Lawer, who today is First National’s board chair, CEO, and president, “Anyone in the bank who worked for my dad—if you ask them ‘What did you learn from Dan?’—would sit up at attention and say: We don’t lie, cheat, or steal, and we don’t ask anybody else to.”

Cuddy’s integrity and dedication to community lives on today, but it didn’t start with him. Lawer says her grandfather Warren Cuddy wrote the mission statement for the bank: Take care of your community, employees, customers, and shareholders. “Listed fourth on purpose is shareholders,” Lawer explains, “because the strategy to providing a good return for shareholders is taking care of your community, your employees, and your customers. It’s a generational philosophy,” Lawer says. It reinforces a statement from her father in 1985. “We don’t worry about the industry or the competition. We figure if we look out for the needs of the community and our employees, the return to stockholders will take care of itself,” Dan Cuddy told Alaska Business.

Lawer sees the far-reaching positive effects of the program in the careers of her employees. “There are skills that our staff develop as they participate as adults in Junior Achievement programs,” she says. “One of the things that’s most meaningful to me is that [JA] is successful on so many levels: the skills youth will have for their entire lives and what it contributes to the community.”

Lawer adds, “We don’t hire for jobs, we hire for careers.”

Lawer celebrated a professional milestone in 2024: fifty years of working at First National. Looking back over her career at the bank, she’s particularly proud of accolades First National has received from its employees, specifically that it has earned the top spot as “Best Place to Work, 250+ Employees” in the Best of Alaska Business awards for nine years. “We’ve also earned national recognition [from American Banker], and an independent, confidential poll of our employees found that we are at the top of a short list of the best banks to work for in the country,” Lawer says.

In addition to decades of supporting its community and employees, First National has also been a long-standing editorial partner for Alaska Business beyond its support of JA of Alaska and the Alaska Business Hall of Fame, communicating frankly and openly about its practices and policies. In the 1985 cover story, Cuddy and then-president of First National J.P. Pfeifer gave clear explanations to Laird for the bank’s investment decisions, lending policies, and even its decision, at the time, to not follow a national trend in offering IRA accounts. As Laird wrote in the article, “That decision raised some eyebrows in the Alaskan banking community, too. But Cuddy says he’s not particularly interested in what others think of the way he runs his bank.”

Lawer explains that today, First National has a good relationship with Alaska Business and other media. “We take pride in our organization and being transparent,” she says. “We haven’t had a problem speaking to the media because there’s nothing different from what we say and what we do,” continuing that policy of openness and honesty.

Lawer was inducted into the Alaska Business Hall of Fame in 2007, and in a profile published that year (by Tracy Barbour, who still writes for Alaska Business today), Lawer said, “[The next generation is] going to be the next key people in their families… the next leaders of our state.” She also offered to young people this advice: “When one door appears to close, don’t focus on the fact that it’s closed because there are many doors open to you. Try them all. Be curious.”

She said in a late 2024 interview that her family’s long history of supporting JA is “simply because it does such an amazing thing in our community,” explaining that the skills youth learn in JA go beyond business and finance to other skills and tools that will be useful to them throughout their professional and personal lives.

And for our part? As Alaska Business Publishing Co. General Manager Jason Martin says, “Junior Achievement is critical to young people’s future financial success because it provides financial literacy, career readiness, and entrepreneurship skills. This empowers Alaska’s business leaders of tomorrow to make informed decisions about their finances and future careers. That’s why Alaska Business has supported Junior Achievement of Alaska’s mission since 1987.”

While First National and Alaska Business work to support JA of Alaska, it’s JA that literally brings financial and economic education to Alaska classrooms, building up Alaska’s future entrepreneurs and workforce. JA of Alaska President Flora Teo stated in late 2024 that the nonprofit is on track to serve 20,000 Alaskan students for the 2024–2025 school year, a record for the organization that strives to promote economic mobility for all Alaskans.

While lots of work can be accomplished from behind a desk, in the case of our young people, there’s no substitute for spending time in the classroom. Forge your own partnership with JA of Alaska and volunteer. As Martin says, “You will empower tomorrow’s business leaders and make a lasting, positive impact within our community.”