By KLAS STOLPE
Sentinel Staff Writer
A Sitka-based seafood company built from the ground up by fishermen now has a woman from an Alaska fishing family to keep it on course through the potentially murky waters of an industry based on the state’s most valuable renewable natural resource.
Cora Campbell, 39, born and raised in Petersburg and its surrounding waters, has spent a lifetime working in the seafood industry and on Jan. 1 this year became president and CEO of Silver Bay Seafoods. Campbell was the company’s chief external affairs officer before taking over as the company’s top executive.
“I grew up on Baranof Street (Petersburg) in a house my parents loved because it had a large warehouse for fishing gear and was just a short walk to the harbor,” Campbell said. “When they moved to a new house after my sister and I were grown, I actually bought the house for the same reasons.”
Cora Campbell (Photo provided)
In a town where streets are named after boats and boats after women, the F/V Cora J was a fixture at the docks and waters during the various seasons.
“Over the years I gillnetted, trolled, and seined for salmon and fished crab, halibut and herring in Southeast,” Campbell said. “We were a family operation and I spent every season working alongside my dad, mom, sister, and cousins.”
Her father, Gary Slaven, is still an active fisherman in Petersburg and fishes the Cora J with Cora’s cousin, nephews, and son.
Aside from being a fisherman, her father was chairman of the Alaska Board of Fisheries, Alaska’s representative to the Pacific Salmon Treaty, and on the Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute Board. Her mother, Christi, part owner of the Cora J, worked the decks and the policies with him.
“From a young age, I was able to understand how important these policy bodies are to maintaining a successful fishing business,” Campbell said. “And the need for those who care about preserving our working waterfronts to step up and serve.”
It was with this mindset that after graduating with a BA degree from Pacific Lutheran University in 2000 Campbell went to work representing Petersburg fishermen. She has served on various boards including United Fishermen of Alaska, the North Pacific Fishery Management Council, the Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute, and the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill Trustee Council. She also accepted a fisheries advisory role with Gov. Sarah Palin’s administration and was commissioner of the Alaska Department of Fish & Game under Gov. Sean Parnell from 2010-2014. At age 31 she was the youngest commissioner to serve in Parnell’s cabinet.
“I served two governors, and then was appointed by Governor Parnell to lead the Alaska Department of Fish and Game,” Campbell said. “Serving as Fish and Game Commissioner was one of the greatest honors of my life. That agency has an incredibly dedicated staff of professionals and a mission that affects nearly all Alaskans. I will always be grateful to Governor Parnell for entrusting me to lead Fish and Game and for his unwavering support when critics said, ‘She’s too young!’ ‘She’s not a trained biologist!’ ‘For heavens sake, she’s a woman!”’
In 2015 Campbell became president and CEO of Siu Alaska Corporation, which is the for-profit subsidiary of Norton Sound Economic Development Corporation.
“I loved the blend of running a for-profit fishing business where the profits benefited Alaskan communities,” she said. “I saw it as a continuation of my service to the state and the small Alaskan communities I love.”
Campbell, a 1997 graduate of Petersburg High School, and her husband Casey, Sitka High class of 2000, have two children, Nicole, 15, and Eric, 12.
Silver Bay has six processing operations in Alaska, and one in California. In the years since its founding in Sitka, the company has expanded to include operations in Craig, Metlakatla, Naknek, Valdez; Seattle, Washington; and Ventura, Watsonville, and San Pedro, California. Campbell and her family live in Anchorage.
“I took the opportunity with Silver Bay because it’s such a unique opportunity, to lead a company that’s owned by more than 400 fishermen,” Campbell said. “We’re able to focus on fishermen’s services, be transparent about the economics of processing, and share profits with fishermen. Silver Bay has been expanding because the model of a fisherman-owned company resonates with fishermen across the state. We are excited about opening our new plant in False Pass in June, bringing the Silver Bay model to another area and group of fishermen.”
Campbell is also excited about the future of the industry globally.
“I’m always an optimist about Alaska seafood,” she said. “Because we have such great fishermen, a great product and we have such a great system to promote it.”
Former Sitka municipal engineer Rich Riggs has been the CEO of Silver Bay since the company’s founding in 2007. He will remain a managing partner overseeing all sales and related activities for the processor.
The Petersburg-based limit-seiner Cora J, named after new president and CEO of Silver Bay Seafoods, Cora Campbell, hauls aboard a small catch of pink and chum salmon during a 2004 Southeast Alaska salmon purse seine fishery outside Eliza Harbor on Admiralty Island. Campbell, who grew up in Petersburg and now lives in Anchorage, began her new job at the corporation January 1. (Sentinel Photo by Klas Stolpe)
Silver Bay co-founder and president Troy Denkinger, a seiner and one of the 450 fishermen-owners of Silver Bay, also will take on a managing partner role, focusing on the overall “fisherman experience” throughout the organization.
Riggs said he was proud of being a strategic part of the startup team that successfully implemented what was then a passionate but unrealized dream of Alaska fishermen - to vertically integrate Alaska fishermen by constructing a state-of-the art, high volume processing and freezing facility in Sitka, and thereby maximizing opportunity for fishermen.
In nine of the 10 years preceding the 2007 startup of the Silver Bay processing plant at Sawmill Cove, Southeast had an abundance of pink salmon, but the shortage of processing capacity left Southeast seiners facing processor-imposed limits on pink salmon landings.
“First and foremost we increased opportunity for harvest and likewise maximized the value of the resource for the Alaska fisherman,” Riggs said. “That remains our objective today - maximize opportunity and maximize the value of the resource.”
In 2007 this was the vision of Riggs, Denkinger and 35 other Alaska fishermen who shared the dream.
“Now we have more than 450 fishermen owners,” Riggs said. “In a sentence, I’m proud of what Silver Bay has meant and continues to mean for Alaska fishermen, and what it has meant and continues to mean for Sitka.”
Rigg’s passions for Sitka are evident in the countless interpersonal relationships developed across the globe over the last 12-years since Silver Bay’s inception.
“I am extremely proud that the first chapter of the Silver Bay novel will always start in Sitka – my home town and the place I refer to as “paradise.” he said.
The first Silver Bay plant was built at the former Alaska Pulp Corp. site, and the company duplicated the model in other regions in Alaska and expanded into California. The plant started the same year that Sheldon Jackson College closed its doors. “That initial build was an amazing project with outstanding local contractors being a critical component,” Riggs said. “Local contractors who are still our strategic partners in construction today as we build across the state. Furthermore, as the guy that has signed almost every check for Silver Bay over the past 12 years, from vendor checks to payroll, I smile when I stop to contemplate the multiplier dollars the Silver Bay engine brings to Sitka.”
The contributions to the Sitka economy include not only the company payroll, payments to fishermen, purchases from vendors, raw fish and property taxes and donations to community nonprofits.
Riggs said family is important, touching on his own, others in the Sitka community and the Silver Bay family.
“We have an amazing culture at Silver Bay and this culture is what has stimulated a lot of our organic grown from within,” he said. “It all started with the Alaska fishermen and it resonates throughout the organization, at every level. A part of our challenge as we continue to grow is to maintain and perpetuate that culture as we now have 125 full time employees and over 2,000 seasonal employees. I am so proud of what Silver Bay means to its employees. Not just an employer, but a culture – with fishermen owners that value their role and contribution to the company’s success and to fishermen’s success.”
Campbell’s internal promotion is yet another strategic growth initiative for Silver Bay.
“Cora has a proven track record, both as an Alaskan fisherman and seafood executive,” Riggs said. “And under her leadership Silver Bay will continue to promote the values of the company in the quest to build a world class seafood company.”
