User:Wendy Svarny-Hawthorne

I am a retired chief executive of an Alaska Native corporation. I received an AFA at the Institute of American Arts (IAIA) in 1981, a BA in Economics at the Colorado College in 1999, and an MBA at the University of Washington 2003.

I was born in Unalaska, Alaska, and grew up in Edmonds, Washington. After graduating from IAIA in Santa Fe, New Mexico, I moved back to Unalaska in 1981. I worked as a self-employed fine artist, a retail clerk, a customer service representative supervisor at a passenger airline, and a receptionist at an Alaska Native corporation. There I went from receptionist to board secretary and manager of shareholder affairs to chief executive officer, a position I held for ten of my twenty-one years with the company.