Meet Alaska 2023 Conference
Rosita Johnson
Mar 17, 2023
The Alaska Support Industry Alliance recently hosted the 2023 Meet Alaska conference. The event brought together a diverse group of professionals from different industries, including state & local government, energy, and mining, and featured keynote speeches by the Alliance Board President Randy Belts and U.S. Senator Dan Sullivan.
ASCI's Business Development Manager Rosita Johnson shared several highlights with us about the conference. In addition to the updates from ConocoPhillips and Santos Alaska about the Pikka and Willow projects, there were several other presentations and panel discussions that grabbed our attention:
Alaska's Labor Shortage - insightful input by the local staffing agencies, Hawk and PeopleAK, about the difficulties of retaining young talent in Alaska. Just like ASCI, the agencies have been putting addition work into recruiting from outside of the state to fill many of the positions.
Carbon Capture Utilization and Storage - impressive statistics about how oil & gas can actually reduce the amount of carbon emissions and contribute to Alaska's economy.
Alaska Resource Education - Becky from ARE gave us a short introduction to this non-profit organization, and encouraged local businesses to contribute by allowing their employee to be guest speakers during their work day (instead of claiming paid or unpaid leave).
Alaska's Critical Strategic Minerals - great phrase that summarizes the importance of mining to Alaska and to the U.S.: "mining is not everything, but without mining everything is nothing." AMA's Deantha Stabinski brought it up again during the reception after the event.
The Alliance published presentations on their website:
