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AVCP Selects First Woman CEO

AVCP President and CEO Vivian Korthius at the AVCP Annual Convention in Bethel, Alaska on Oct. 6, 2016.
Dean Swope
/
KYUK

The Association of Village Council Presidents has selected its first female CEO: Vivian Johnson Korthuis. The decision comes on the third day of the regional nonprofit corporation's annual convention, after a year fraught with challenges. Some see this convention, and the change it has brought, as the light at the end of the tunnel.

Vivian Korthuis, AVCP’s first female CEO, said at the end of Thursday’s meeting that she was overwhelmed but confident.

“I think the opportunity exists now to really take AVCP to the next step,"  Korthuis said. 

When asked how she would grow AVCP, she pointed to changes in the bylaws that led to her appointment.

“Well I think the board of directors has created a path for the company, and my job is to help them do that,"  Korthuis  said. 

Korthuis grew up in the Village of Emmonak and eventually attended Dartmouth College in New Hampshire. She is the first female CEO of a major tribal organization, and also the first to be hired - not elected.

This came about when the executive board asked delegates for control over the process and, in a three-quarters vote, it was granted. Marcy Sherer, vice president of the Native Village of Napaimute approves of the change. 

“CEO really should be a hired position so that the executive board has oversight control and can manage the company through the CEO. In that aspect, it’s a very positive move," Sherer said. 

Sherer agrees with her new CEO that this could be a new start for AVCP.

“I think that this is a turn in history, a turn of the page in history," Sherer said. 

But not everyone agrees. 

“It’s kind of a strange feeling," said Mike Williams Sr., who is the alternate delegate for the village of Akiak. He didn’t like way the vote went down, though he does think Korthuis has strong credentials.

“What we lost is having that direct voice and involvement cut off from the rest of the member tribes," Williams said.

In the months leading up to the meeting, AVCP’s legal counsel Liz Pederson circulated a letter to the tribes informing them of the proposed changes. Williams and others responded with their own letter, calling the actions illegal under the bylaws. The final voting on the issue, done in a closed meeting on Wednesday, supported AVCP's recommendations.

The same group raised questions earlier this year about the state of AVCP's financial health, a topic that took up most of the first day's meeting. Questions about whether grant funds were spent in compliance with federal regulations went without explanation for some time, and during that period former AVCP president Myron Naneng abruptly resigned.

Regardless of the dissent, at this point the AVCP Executive Board appears to have received the nod from its members to proceed with the recovery plan it laid out during the first day of the meeting.