Alaska Business Hall of Fame 2025

From that observation, Leary brainstormed with female clients and hit upon the idea for Fishe Wear. The “she” signifies fishing gear designed by and for women. Leary crafted products for herself and other female anglers, from leggings and drybags to fishing tools and Xtratuf boots, using high-quality materials and vibrant prints.

Leary explains, “I wanted something that was comfortable and that gives you confidence, like going to work every day and wearing a suit.”

Leary launched Fishe Wear in 2015. “I had the benefit of so many years at Carlile, helping to build that company up,” she says. “Taking all of the mechanics of running a larger company into a smaller company, we were able to ramp up in about six months.”

Her experience in logistics helped with coordinating merchandise manufactured out of state and shipped to retailers in Alaska and nationwide. Leary was able to adapt lessons learned in the trucking industry, even though the daily operations could not be more different. She found that the fundamental strategies for success were similar.

In addition to designing and selling apparel, Leary bought the Women’s Flyfishing guide service from its founder, Cecelia “Pudge” Kleinkauf, in 2017. Through both businesses, Leary paves the way for other women to participate in the sport she learned to love while growing up in Vacationland.

Casting so many hooks in the water at once, so to speak, is business as usual for Leary. “I love marketing and selling, and I love growing businesses, so it was a natural tendency to do that,” she says.

Joe Schierhorn

Born in Des Moines, Iowa, Joe Schierhorn grew up in Fairbanks, where his engineer father managed a road construction company. Schierhorn studied accounting at an out-of-state college and brought those skills home.

“I always wanted to come back to Alaska with the thought that I’d get in on the ground floor of a business,” he says. What he didn’t realize was that the business he’d help start wouldn’t have a floor at all. Not at first.

When Northrim Bank launched in 1990, it operated from two trailers in the parking lot of the Sohio Building. The concrete edifice in Midtown Anchorage now holds Northrim’s main offices, the nerve center for a statewide bank with more than 400 employees in Alaska.

Schierhorn was there when employees were in single digits. He got into banking in the ‘80s, just as a statewide economic crash caused a dozen banks to fail. That decimation cleared the way for fresh growth; one of Northrim’s co-founders, 2001 Alaska Business Hall of Fame laureate Marc Langland, invited Schierhorn to join the ride.

“He said it was a great time to get into banking because you’re gonna learn a lot. Which I did in a very short period of time,” Schierhorn recalls.

He vividly remembers the Monday when Northrim first opened. “I came into the bank and had my best banker suit on, shoes polished, and ready to go. Marc said, ‘That’s great. Put together your hit list of customers you’re going to call—and, by the way, this guy in the basement needs some help.’ He was our head of IT at the time, and the help he needed was moving furniture that morning,” Schierhorn says. “So my first day on the job I spent without my suit coat, moving furniture. Got a little hot and sweaty; had to take a break to go to a chamber of commerce meeting to start meeting customers that day.”

And, as Schierhorn recounts, he did indeed acquire Northrim’s first customer on opening day.

Some customers from the trailer days are still with Northrim today. Schierhorn says, “That’s one of the reasons I wanted to get in on the ground floor of a business: to try to create an entity that would have life and go forward and develop those relationships with people throughout Alaska.”

Schierhorn learned the importance of relationships while running his first business: painting houses during his first summer in high school. “It was so much fun, creating that business, working with customers, opening up accounts at other businesses that provide us supplies,” he recalls. Schierhorn worked construction through college, but he always had his eye on a startup opportunity.

Although he stepped back earlier this year from his roles as president and CEO of Northrim Bank, retaining the chairmanship of holding company Northrim BanCorp, Schierhorn can still cast his eye down from his office in the former Sohio Building onto the parking lot where Northrim started up.

Ralph Seekins

Hall of Fame recognition is nothing new for Ralph Seekins. In 2023, he was so honored by the American Quarter Horse Association, an organization for which he served a term as president in 2018.

For most Alaskans, Seekins’ greater fame comes from selling horseless carriages. He appeared regularly on TV commercials statewide for his Seekins Ford Lincoln dealership. The company was among the first cohort of Alaska Business Top 49ers in 1985, ranked #48 with more than $23 million in gross revenue (more than $70 million in today’s dollars). The dealership has done steady business over the long term, reporting similar revenues for 2023.

Seekins has owned the Fairbanks dealership since 1977, when it was Jim Thompson Ford Sales. He began working there a few years earlier as sales manager after dipping his toes into the automotive industry as a mechanic and sales associate in Washington.

Seekins studied biology and chemistry at Wheaton College in Illinois. He returned to higher education in 2021 as chair of the University of Alaska Board of Regents. That appointment was a return to public service after Seekins represented Fairbanks in the Alaska State Senate from 2003 to 2006. Seekins also served on the City of Fairbanks Permanent Fund Review Board, the City of Fairbanks Transportation Committee, the Governor’s Economic Advisory Committee on North Slope Natural Gas, the Alaska Permanent Fund Board of Trustees, and the Fairbanks North Star Borough Economic Advisory Committee.

As another form of public generosity, Seekins and his family operate the Helping Hooves therapeutic riding service.

The horse connection arrived through his daughters. Their request for equine companionship resulted in Seekins Family Quarter Horses starting in 1993. A few years later, the family offered their show horses as mounts for children, adults, and military veterans with disabilities.

Breeding, raising, training, and showing horses led Seekins to join the American Quarter Horse Association, dedicated to preserving the breed and encouraging humane treatment of horses. Seekins served on association committees for years before becoming a director of the organization in 2006, elevated to director emeritus in 2016 and finally being elected its president.

“It’s a nice responsibility, and I’m going to live up to that,” Seekins said upon his election. “It’s a good way for me to give back.”

Indeed, Seekins sees strong parallels between public service and automobile sales. Personal relationships are key to both.

Don Young

For most of his time on Capitol Hill, Don Young stood alone as the only licensed mariner in the Congress. Before entering public service, his trade was running a tugboat on the Yukon River, barging supplies from his adopted hometown of Fort Yukon.

Young was born and raised in California’s Sacramento Valley, where he earned a teaching degree after enlisting in the US Army and serving in a tank battalion. Degree in hand, Young migrated in 1959 to the new state of Alaska and settled north of the Arctic Circle. While living in Fort Yukon, Young worked as a teacher while the river was frozen during the winter.

Political ambitions led Young to run for the Fort Yukon city council in 1960, and he served one term as mayor before being elected to the Alaska House of Representatives. While serving in the Alaska Senate, Young lost his first bid for Congress against incumbent Representative Nick Begich Sr., who went missing in a plane crash weeks before the 1972 election. At a special election to fill the vacancy, Young ran again and, although he received fewer votes than the previous fall, they were enough to send him to Capitol Hill, by a margin smaller than 2,000 votes.

On his 2018 campaign website, Young recalled his 1973 election: “Just hours after being sworn in, I found myself leading the historic battle in the House for the approval of the trans-Alaskan pipeline.” That first session, Young’s colleagues honored him as Freshman Congressman of the Year.

Once he became the Congressman for All Alaska, Young saw his role as directing federal resources to help the 49th State catch up with the rest of the country. He wrote in 2018, “I will continue to champion legislation and funding for programs benefiting Alaska and the nation. My vision remains the same: to provide citizens with the opportunity for a better life not just for today but also for tomorrow and the future.”

Young was re-elected in 2018 and once more in 2020. By then, he was the longest-serving Republican in the history of the US House (five Democrats have held longer terms, and Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa surpassed Young’s longevity among all Republicans in Congress last fall).

When asked how long he would stay in office, Young would often answer, “As long as God or the voters let me.” The voters, it turned out, would not have the final say. Much like his predecessor, Young died on an airplane. On March 18, 2022, he lost consciousness on a flight to Seattle, on his way home to Alaska.

For his actions supporting the state’s economic development, Young is being inducted into the Alaska Business Hall of Fame posthumously. The same honor was bestowed in 2010 to former US Senator Ted Stevens, shortly before his death that year. Another opportunity to celebrate Young is coming up on June 9. By legislative proclamation in 2023, that day is now Don Young Day, encouraging Alaskans to celebrate the late congressman’s birthday and to honor his contributions.

In 2018, Young wrote, “I have proudly passed more bills—a majority with an Alaskan focus—into law than any other member of the House of Representatives, and I look forward to building upon these successes.” In his absence, the building is left for Alaskans to continue.