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It's not easy being green. Or is it?
Age: 45 Position: chief executive officer of Lafayette Bio-Ag Company at a glance: The young company is in the midst of raising capital for its first project, a farm plant in Belmont with a herd of 5,000 cattle that will be called Belmont Bio-Ag. The company plans to break ground by the end of this year. The facility will have an ethanol plant and a greenhouse, create more than 100 jobs and produce beef, bedding and potted plants, ethanol, distillers grain, carbon dioxide, electricity, ammonia products and fertilizer. Revenue is expected to be $80 million to $90 million per year. Over the past few years, Lafayette Bio-Ag has been designing the system, called Symbiosys, that will be used in Belmont and will minimize waste environmental impacts. Professional history: Joined Green Bay engineering firm Foth & Van Dyke after earning undergraduate working as a business development consultant, 1983-85; joined UW Extension in 1987 as a community resource development agent for Lafayette County; transferred into Extension's business program in 1989 to start the business counseling system in southwest Wisconsin; developed and ran Extension's contract education program for rural businesses from 1997 to 2005; took leave of absence from Extension to join Lafayette Bio-Ag in 2005. Education: Bachelor's degree in marketing and economics from UW-Green Bay in 1983; MBA from Marquette in 1986; master of science in managerial economics from University of Kentucky in 1987. Personal: Born near Oshkosh and raised in Green Bay. Single parent with two teenage daughters. Q. What piqued your interest in renewable energy? A. Growing up hunting and fishing with my dad and growing up as a boy scout. When I first started college I was a biochem major, and I always had an interest in renewable energy and environmental issues. I ended up in business, but never lost that passion for environmental issues. I wanted to kind of push the edge. Instead of polluting can we find not just an area to make revenue, but find a profitable way, and create a market solution, for people to be green? Q. What's the key to being profitable and green? A. You do have to be patient. Because the translation of what is environmentally responsible into something that is profitable is where we are just, as a society, starting to put the market mechanisms in play. Taking risks to find ways in which complying or meeting or exceeding environmental standards makes sense. And at the same time pushing our local and state and federal officials to recognize that you've got to create an environment where the market can play a role and then get out of the way. The creation of a fully monitored carbon market (a system to trade permits to emit carbon dioxide) in the United States, comparable to those that exist with the Kyoto signatory states, is the most important thing that out government could do to foster green industry development. Q. Is a focus on being green at odds with a focus of maximum profits? A. Realistically, you can't wipe out all wastes overnight and say 'I'm going to make more money being the ultimate recycler.' What you can do is you can train your people and adopt a corporate philosophy saying, 'OK, if we're going to look at continuous improvement and buy into the whole concept of being a learning organization, being environmentally responsible is a natural consequence.' Because if you're polluting, well, you've got permitting issues. Q. There were some people in the Belmont area who were skeptical of your project. Have you convinced them that it is viable and good for the area? A. I don't know if convinced is an appropriate term. What we have done is we have been transparent. And we've tried to be as responsible and responsive to every and all questions. There is certain ground, I'm sure, with a few of them that I'm sure we're never going to share. But I think we have met the threshold for the vast majority of the people in the area. Q. What are some common problems you encountered during your time with the UW-Extension contract education program? A. One of the first questions of any client was to sit down after I had interviewed senior management and go to the CEO and ask, 'When I get done with the diagnosis of what I think your challenges are, can you accept that the probability is pretty darn high that the problem is going to be you?' If they could handle that, then I considered them an open learner. (The problem is often that the top manager is) the last to know the problem exists. And in this job, I'm no different. Q. Why do you think that is such a common problem? A. For good CEOs that people trust and admire, subordinates tend to not want to bring them bad news. The really talented CEOs and senior managers that I've worked with over the years, in my opinion, are those who have the ultimate confidence in their ability to frame the decision and ask the good questions, and constantly challenge themselves in their own knowledge and wisdom of the facts. A very good CEO is someone who hires someone who is brighter than they are in their area of expertise and isn't intimidated by other bright people. The rural executive faces a different set of dilemmas than the urban executive, in that you don't have a lot of colleagues and counterparts that you can rub shoulders with. You've got to travel a ways. You've got to join a tech group or an executive group and really reach out to find somebody who has similar pressures. Q. What made you leave the UW-Extension program for your position with Lafayette Bio-Ag? A. The first decision was taking them on (as a client for the program in 2002). They were a startup and we didn't deal with startups. But the scope, the scale, the innovativeness (made me ask) my administrators 'Do you mind?' I said 'If this group pulls this one off, wow. They're really pushing the envelope.' UW Extension and the UW System preaches economic development. This is real-life stuff. Q. What was it about Lafayette Bio-Ag that made you believe they were pushing the envelope? A. Because rather than view environmental laws as a constraint, they opted to view environmental laws as an objective. Second, as compared to a manufacturing operation coming into a community, where they import the majority of their components and assemble it and export it, just about everything in (Lafayette Bio-Ag's) process is from the region, and just about everything coming out of the process goes back to the region. Q. What are some of your hobbies? A. I have a vacation home that I own with my brother called "The Farm." It's 225 acres near Woodman between Boscobel and Prairie du Chien. Prairie restoration. Savanna restoration. We've got some biomass research crops up there. Woodworking. We do all the outdoor activities from passive to consumptive, from picking berries to doing a little deer hunting to counting the flowers and the fireflies. madison.com ©2009 Capital Newspapers. All rights reserved. |
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