President’s Message: Company Growth

Andrew Guy, President and CEO

Storyknife, May/June 2024 edition

Calista’s Board has a critical function for the Calista Team and that is to provide our direction. It accomplishes that by adopting our Vision and Mission statements.

Our Vision sets the inspirational objective for the Calista Team. Our Vision is to be: A world class corporation that exemplifies corporate responsibility, cultural stewardship and economic stability.

Integral to the Vision is the Mission statement which sets the overall goal and the ways to make it a reality. Our Mission is: Increase Shareholder benefits and economic opportunities through innovation, growth, leadership, partnership, execution and financial discipline.

To help us reach our Mission, the Calista Board and management adopts 5-year Strategic Goals and annual objectives. Calista management and staff take the necessary daily actions to make those goals a reality.

How we manage our company directly impacts the distributions and other benefits we provide to Shareholders. Since 2008, Calista started providing a distribution every year to every Shareholder, excluding special Elders’ distributions. 2014 was the first year Calista started providing two distributions.

We provided a record $16.3 million in Distributions in 2023 alone.

The growth in revenues and in distributions to Shareholders has matched the growth in the number of Shareholders that has occurred with the ongoing enrollment of Shareholder Descendants. Open Enrollment began in 2017. The number of Shareholders has nearly tripled over the last six years going from 13,000 Original Shareholders before enrollment to 36,900 Shareholders in 2023.

We encourage you, our Shareholders, to continue reaching out to our Descendants. Remind your brothers and sisters, and children and grandchildren, to enroll and to be informed about Calista’s activities. Our legacy as a corporation will live on through our Descendants.

Preparing the next generation with our Yup’ik teachings of Yuuyaraq will be important in keeping our culture alive and grounding the business in our traditions. If the next generation sees the benefits and value of becoming a Shareholder, they will take ownership. Calista is our company, and it’s up to you and every Shareholder to keep it growing.