Sullivan Recognizes Longtime Staff Member Kathlene Rowell as “Alaskan of the Week”
WASHINGTON—U.S. Senator Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska) recognized a longtime member of his Alaska staff, Kathlene Rowell, on the Senate floor yesterday. Kathlene is leaving his office after nearly 15 years of working for Sen. Sullivan. As deputy state director, Kathlene set the gold standard for work ethic, loyalty, integrity and kindness—characteristics demonstrated time and time again to her coworkers and Alaska constituents. Kathlene was recognized as part of Sen. Sullivan’s series, “Alaskan of the Week.”
Click here or the image above to watch Sen. Sullivan’s remarks.
Tribute to Kathlene Rowell
Mr. President, it is nearing the end of the week, and normally, that is when I come down to the Senate floor to do my weekly--I try to make it weekly--Alaskan of the Week speech.
Now, I know for the pages, this is their favorite speech of the week. You get to hear about Alaska; you get to hear about some great Alaskan doing some great stuff. I usually try to give a little update about what is going on in our great State because it is always something interesting. And then I encourage people watching on TV: Come on up to Alaska; you are going to have the trip of a lifetime if you do it.
So today the Alaskan of the Week is someone very special to me and my wife. I am going to talk in detail about all she has done for our State. Her name is Kathlene Rowell. And she has worked for me in Alaska going on 15 years. The Presiding Officer understands that as a former Governor, where you have great staff that do amazing things, not just for you and your team but for the whole State.
Her title in the office has been deputy State director, but she has been so much more than that. She has literally been the glue that has kept my whole team together, not just since I have been in the Senate but even before I became a Senator.
So I am going to talk about Kathlene real quick here in a minute as the Alaskan of the Week. She so much deserves it. Just wanted to mention a few things.
We are all, of course, praying for the people impacted by the fires in California. We are all ready to stand by to help. The States are coming together. My State is certainly a State that understands natural disasters, and, you know, even in Alaska right now, Anchorage just last week--didn't make any news down here--was hit with hurricane-force winds on Sunday, up to 130 miles an hour. A lot of people--hundreds--were without power, a lot of property damage. So, you know, we are thinking about our Alaskan colleagues who were hit by that hurricane--there is no other word--typhoon.
And, of course, praying for everybody in Los Angeles. You know, with a State and population that big, we all know people. I have a good college roommate buddy of mine Tom McMillin, my two sisters-in-law Janine and Jennifer, they are all being real negatively impacted by that. So we are thinking about them.
In Alaska, I always like to give an update. The Sun is actually coming back. We hit the winter solstice. In Anchorage, we are gaining about 4 minutes of sun a day; in Fairbanks, we are gaining about 5 minutes of sun a day; and in about a week, January 22, the Sun will rise again in Utqiagvik, AK--Barrow, AK--the top of North America. That will be the first time the sun comes up over the horizon in 2 months. So they get a dark winter, and it is cold up there.
The Iditarod, the Last Great Race, is coming up March 2. If you are thinking about coming to Alaska, don't think just this summer. Come up in the winter, too; it is great. So that is a little bit of update to tell what is going on.
Now, back to Kathlene Rowell, the rock in our office whose last day--oh, it breaks my heart, breaks my wife Julie's heart. Her last day was yesterday.
So little bit of background about Kathlene. She moved with her family to Alaska from Chicago when she was 3 years old. Her father worked in the oil fields and had been commuting to Alaska, Illinois, Chicago--back and forth. He thought it was time for the family to come together, so they settled in beautiful Eagle River, AK, a gorgeous--and I mean gorgeous--patriotic community, mountainous community right outside of Anchorage.
Kathlene went to Chugiak High. Go Mustangs. She was an excellent, driven student. Anyone who knows Kathlene knows that ``excellence'' is her motto. Everything she does is excellent.
But we got confirmation from her good friend Robyn Engibous--on my staff, my deputy chief of staff here in DC--who went to school with Kathlene and remains very close, that, yes, Kathlene was a straight-A student. We knew that. She showed horses. She worked at the coffee shop in Eagle River called Jitters, a mainstay in that great community. She excelled academically.
Went to college first in Colorado, then in Washington State. Did a semester with the National Outdoor Leadership, which she loved, and then came back to Alaska, finished up, and graduated from Alaska Pacific University which, very importantly, she did well there. But really, really importantly, she met her husband Ben who is a great guy. Great guy. They are a great couple.
So that is Kathlene's early background. She then worked in the parks division, division of parks and rec, right at the department of natural resources. That is when I first met her. I was the new commissioner at DNR--we call it DNR in Alaska; that covers everything in Alaska. We worked in the same building. I was a brandnew commissioner, and I was looking for a special assistant--a young, smart, talented, special assistant--as the commissioner of the department of natural resources.
Now, this is a big job, right? If Alaska were its own country, it would be the envy of the world in terms of resources, strategic location, critical minerals, our military, you name it. DNR has a lot of responsibility over all these things.
Matter of fact, not to go on a tangent here, but I had an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal today titled ``Greenland Is Nice, but Alaska Is Better.'' Goes into all this stuff about how great Alaska is.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Wall Street Journal Op-Ed, ``Greenland Is Nice, but Alaska Is Better,'' be printed in the Record at the end of my remarks. Just to give you a sense of our great State there.
So I needed a special assistant. And I was looking at all these resumes and these lawyers and stuff, and here, for the young pages, this is the value of what they call an elevator speech. You have heard of an elevator speech, right? You have to make a pitch; you have to make it quick. So I am getting on the elevator, Kathlene at the time she is probably mid, early twenties. She is very young-looking, so then she looked a lot younger than her early twenties.
And she gets on the elevator, and, boy, oh, boy, it was the elevator pitch: Commissioner Sullivan, I understand you are looking for a special assistant.
The elevator is going up, all these people are listening: I believe I have the qualities, the hard work, the ethics, the commitment to excellence to be your special assistant. I would like to come by your office and interview.
Boom, the door opens. I was like, dang, that was impressive. Elevator pitch. So she made that. Came in, interviewed, and I am like, I am hiring her--none of these gung ho, high-falutin lawyers; I am going to put my trust in this young Alaskan. And, boy, oh, boy, I am so glad I did. It was the best elevator pitch I have ever seen.
Kathlene rolled up her sleeves and learned everything she could, and before you knew it, she was running the department of natural resources, which in Alaska is the giant organization of hundreds and hundreds of people, the key to our economy.
She was working with my other special assistant John Katchen. She was hugely essential to the things we got done at our department of natural resources. We negotiated against ExxonMobil for a giant natural gas deal. You want to talk about a tough thing. Exxon brings in like 25 lawyers to negotiate against a group of 3 of us, right? We took them down.
She organized summits. She helped us redo our State's oil tax regime, which is creating a big spur of development right now. Kathlene was essential in all of this, bringing more producers up to Alaska, a great teammate. Her heart was in serving our State.
Fast-forward a few years, I am going to run for the U.S. Senate--not an easy run. A lot of good Republicans in the primary. There was a Democrat incumbent here; that is never easy. And the first person I said I am going to hire on my campaign team, first person, was Kathlene.
Now, it was a risk. She had a 1-year-old at home at the time, Benjamin, who is now joined by his brother Niles. By the way, Kathlene is a great mom. Her boys are now 12 and 8. When she first started working for me, she had no kids. She has got a beautiful family with her husband Ben and her two wonderful boys.
But it was a risk. She had a great State job, and she is going to, you know, join this guy throwing his hat in the ring. You know, I am not so sure it was looking like an easy deal, but she left her easy--not easy--her secure State job, the first person I hired on my campaign. Organized it. Traveled. And I am pretty sure I would not have won without Kathlene's great work. That was in 2014.
And then she stayed in our office in Alaska, became the deputy State director. And you know how it is, she has been with me and my team, my wife, longer than any other staff member, and she has done an incredible job.
Now, we all know how important staff are, both here in DC and especially back home. They work hard. Let's face it, you know, government jobs aren't always the best: You certainly could probably be making more money in the private sector; the hours can be grueling. But great staff, they are vital to what we do.
They are vital to the work that we get done here in the Senate, in DC, and really vital back home where the work they do for our constituents and the places they travel to are essential. They are essential.
And here is a big thing: As you know, the help that our offices back home do to work for the people we are honored to represent is vital because there are so many giant Federal Agencies--Social Security, the VA, IRS, the Department of Defense, Immigration--that are giant labyrinths that people don't know how to get through.
Our Federal Government can be unwieldy and often unforgiving. So when Alaskans need help on all those things--Social Security checks; VA benefits, we are the State with more veterans per capita than any State in the country; Medicare; the IRS comes screwing up something--they come to us and we work on these cases.
This is a rough number, but since I have been in office, our Alaska staff has worked on more than 12,000 of these cases, and they are really complicated and take hours and hours. We always have at least one person attached to these cases, something they will always remember, and their lives are impacted by whether they are resolved in a good way or bad way.
And as I am sure you probably believe, you don't always hear about this part of the job of representing people in our great Republic; but in my view, it is probably the best part of the job because you have a direct impact on someone you represent, and you can literally change their lives.
We do that, we put our heart and soul into it, but nobody has put their heart and soul into it more than Kathlene. She has made all of this happen, 12,000 cases.
Now, I also have a fantastic director of constituent services in Anchorage, Carrie Keil, who has completed more than 3,600 of these cases herself. She is amazing. But here is what Carrie said about Kathlene: Kathlene is at the helm of the ship. She is the captain of the ship. She makes all of this possible. She is a master communicator. Her loyalty and integrity to the people of Alaska are unmatched.
That is what you want with great staff.
Margaret Sharpe, she runs our Mat-Su Valley regional area, our regional director, Margaret, who does a great job. She calls Kathlene our hero: She is our conscience. She is the gatekeeper of decorum. She is all about kindness and respect. She keeps all of us kind.
Isn't that a great compliment? That is from Margaret on my team.
Elaina Spraker, another great member of my team, our Kenai regional director on the Kenai Peninsula. Covers Kodiak as well. Elaina does a great job. She says that she has never worked with anyone with more skills than Kathlene. Elaina says, ``Kathlene is our rock,'' and I agree. That is so true.
You know, in our line of work, in elected jobs, whether Governors or commissioners or Senators, we all know that certain people have an impact that goes way beyond just the work that they do, and Kathlene is one of those. She has worked so hard, often at the sacrifice of time with her beautiful boys and family and her husband. But she set the bar so high on professionalism, in excellence, in everything she does that everybody around her--in our Anchorage office, in our Alaska offices, in our DC offices--everybody around her, myself included, gets lifted up and made better and has improved by being in Kathlene's orbit. Those are special people, and that is what Kathlene is.
Now, she has been a loyal employee, certainly to me and my wife Julie. There was a little going-away party for her back home in Anchorage, 2 days ago. Fortunately, Julie was able to make it. But throughout all, it is not just loyalty to us. It is to the people of Alaska, to helping people, to helping our State move forward.
And, as I said, yesterday was Kathlene's last day. She is going to bring these same skills to a really great credit union in Anchorage--their gain, our loss--but she is always going to be a member of Team Sullivan.
Kathlene, we all say staff is like family here, but Kathlene truly is like family for me and my wife Julie. We definitely would not have gotten this far without her. We are going to miss her terribly.
So, Kathlene, thank you. Thanks for your great work. Good luck in your new job. From the bottom of my heart and Julie's heart, thanks for all you have done for me and Julie, our office, our State, our country. And, of course, I hope you are honored by one of the most prestigious awards anyone can get in America by being our ``Alaskan of the Week.''
Congratulations, Kathlene. Godspeed.
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