SO ME ST AN DA BO VE TH ER ES T LEADERS& LEGACIES

TheUniversityofNorthDakotaisproudtosalutePrairieBusinessmagazine’sinauguralclass ofLeaders &Legacies —aTop10listofsomeofthe region’smostinnovativeandsuccessful businessexecutives.Bothenterprisingandinspiring,they’vemadeanindeliblemarkintheir communitiesandbeyond.

Lonnie Laffen President, JLG Architects Grand Forks, N.D., and Minneapolis, Minn.

Thirty years ago, Lonnie Laffen and Gary Johnson started an architecture firm; and as with several other origin stories from this year’s Leaders & Legacies awards, their first year or two in business almost was their last. (Johnson didn’t take a paycheck for a part of their second year, JLG reports).

Today, JLG has grown to 120 people in 13 offices, has won more North Dakota-American Institute of Architects awards than any other firm in North Dakota, is one of MSN Money’s 50 Most Admired Companies, is one of Building Design+Construction magazine’s U.S. Architecture Giants and is one of Inc. Magazine’s 50 Best Places to Work in America. Also along the way, JLG has become 100 percent employee-owned. Besides helping to build one of the Midwest’s most successful architecture firms, Laffen has served as president of the North Dakota AIA and director of the North Dakota State University Architecture Advisory Board.

An enthusiastic community volunteer, Laffen also is a past chairman of the Grand Forks Chamber and the Downtown Leadership Group. He currently sits on the board of a number of organizations, including Altru Health System.

Laffen represented Grand Forks in the North Dakota Senate from 2010-18.

For all of this and more, Laffen received the Henry Havig Award – the Chamber of Grand Forks and East Grand Forks’ highest honor – in 2018.

“It’s incredibly humbling,” he said at the time.

“You work hard on all these things to improve your community, and you’re not looking for attention. But in all that service, what you find quickly is that you get back a lot more.”

When Tammy Miller became CEO of Border States Electric in 2006, her goal was to grow the company from $480 million in sales to $1 billion by 2011.

Mission accomplished. Next up: $3 billion, Border States having passed the $2 billion mark in 2018.

Meanwhile, the workforce of the company – America’s seventh-largest electric wholesaler – has expanded from 744 to more than 2,600 over Miller’s tenure.

Miller “is an innovative leader who has inspired this employee-owned company to enjoy unprecedented and continued growth,” the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business wrote in 2015, when Miller won the association’s Influential Leader award.

“She is extremely well regarded in the industry and was the first woman in the 100-year history of the National Association of Electrical Distributors (NAED) to serve as the board chair.”

A proud alumna of Minnesota State University Moorhead, Miller joined Border States as the accounting manager in 1991. She became Southwest Region manager in 2003 and president in 2005.

Along with her Leaders & Legacies award, Miller also has won the NAED’s 2013 Women in Industry Trailblazer Award and 2010 Distributor Distinguished Service Award, the YWCA Woman of the Year in Business Award in 2009 and two distinguished alumni awards from MSUM.

In June, North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum announced that Miller would be joining his administration as chief operating officer on April 1, 2020.

“We are thrilled, grateful and incredibly fortunate to be bringing on board another high-caliber leader with vast experience and success in running a large organization, and with strengths in executing strategy, engagement, communications, enhancing culture and being accessible,” Burgum said.

Ed Shorma Entrepreneur and founder, WCCO Belting Wahpeton, N.D.

In 1954, when asked if he’d buy a Wahpeton, N.D., shoe-repair shop, Ed Shorma responded with, “I couldn’t make a down payment on a free lunch.”

But Shorma solved that problem by mortgaging the family car. Then a new issue arose, Shorma said in a recent video:

“The first week I started, I found out I didn’t have any money for the till. So an old guy who used to work there said, ‘Well, I’ll give you $10 for the till for change.’

“Two days later, the landlord said, ‘You owe me $40 for rent.’ So I went to the old guy again; he said, ‘I’ll lend you the $40. Now, you owe me $50.’

“Well, at the end of the week, I had grossed $103. I paid back his $50, and I gave $3 to the shine boy for all his efforts.

“So, I ended up with 50 bucks. And I was in business.”

That was 1954. By 1993, Shorma was standing in the Rose Garden, receiving the national Small Business Person of the Year award from President Ronald Reagan.

And today, “all of the business ventures he started during the late 20th century remain operational, employing hundreds if not thousands of local citizens,” wrote Karley Serati, Shorma’s granddaughter, in nominating him for a Leaders & Legacies award.

One of those businesses – WCCO Belting in Wahpeton – still is owned by the Shorma family. It makes custom rubber belting for the agriculture, construction, industrial and recycling industries, and sells those products worldwide.

“To this day, my grandpa says he never failed,” Serati wrote. “He had his fair share of setbacks, but he never failed because he never quit.”

Paul Steffes Founder and chief innovation advisor, Steffes LLC Dickinson, N.D.

Paul Steffes is the founder and chief innovation advisor for Steffes LLC, a manufacturer headquartered in Dickinson, N.D. Steffes specializes in steel fabrication and electrical services for a variety of industries.

Steffes majored in mechanical engineering at North Dakota State University. After college, he returned home to Dickinson and started Steffes & Son Manufacturing with his father, George.

The first 5 to 10 years of Steffes & Son were starvation years as the pair explored different opportunities. From these years, Steffes developed his philosophies of always reinventing the company and being willing to take risks and try new things. His innovation motto is “If you’re not failing, you’re not trying.”

Over the past 30 years, the small family business has grown into one of the largest employers in southwest North Dakota. It now holds more than a dozen patents and continues to embody its family-oriented spirit.

Over the past few years, Steffes has stepped away from a CEO role to focus on helping the business through perpetual reinvention and successful succession for the next generations.

Passionate about giving back to the community, Steffes says he’s most proud of leading Friends of the Pool (through which he helped fundraise for Dickinson to build the West River Community Center) and being a cochair for the fund drive to rebuild Trinity High School after a fire. Steffes has had a handful of mentors whose help and influence he’ll never forget. But his driving force, he says, has been his wife Laurie, children, grandchildren and other family, friends and coworkers.