Kathryn Nordberg
Founder and CEO, Erik's Ranch, Inc.
VP, Administration, Heritage of Edina, Inc.
Throughout her career Ms. Nordberg has held executive positions in technology, finance, packaged goods and healthcare. She is recognized for innovative solutions to long-standing operational challenges, and her ability to bring together disparate groups to create positive outcomes for expansive projects with multi-million dollar budgets. Nordberg has extensive leadership experience in strategic and organizational planning, management, marketing, developing partnerships and alliances, sales, new product development, brand renovation and communications. She is an exceptional leader, with vision and perseverance.
Nordberg is also the parent of a child with autism who is now 18 years old. She became the founding chairperson of Families for Early Autism Treatment (FEAT) of MN in 1995 when no funding or early intervention programming was available in Minnesota. In 1997, she participated in bringing world-renown behavioral therapist, Ivar Lovaas, to Minnesota to share the proven “Lovaas Therapy”: Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA), for early intervention with children with autism. She also challenged the Minneapolis Public school system’s status quo in two years of litigation, creating awareness about the lack of efficacy of the system’s program for children with autism. This work laid the groundwork for the medical assistance programs now available for families desiring ABA programming.
Karen King
President/Owner, Nerland Agency
Karen King began her career as a public relations professional in Minneapolis, and went on to work in the sales promotion, sports and entertainment marketing and advertising disciplines for clients such as Coca-Cola USA, Kraft Foods and Pillsbury – and with entertainment organizations such as Warner Bros. Television, the NFL and Major League Baseball.
Moving to Alaska in 1997, King started her own marketing consultancy with clients in Minneapolis and Alaska. She later joined the Nerland Agency in Anchorage where she is now president. Among the Agency’s clients are BP Alaska, McDonald’s Alaska, Walgreens, Midas and the University of Alaska.
Karen serves on several boards, including the United Way of Anchorage and the Anchorage Downtown Rotary Club and Erik’s Ranch.
Patrick J. Bradley
Attorney at Law
Bradley is an attorney in the private practice of law since 1977. Additionally Bradley is a franchisee in the hair care business, and the owner and manager of commercial and residential real estate. He is a graduate of the University of Minnesota with a Bachelor of Science (Business) Degree and a Juris Doctor from William Mitchell College of Law in St. Paul, Minnesota. Prior to commencing the private practice of law, Bradley worked as a meat packer, admissions officer for the College of Business (U of M) and contracts consultant for Control Data Corporation. He was also a religious education teacher for 10 years, has been a High School Mock Trial Coach and Judge since 1998 and a College Mock Trial Judge since 2005. Bradley is currently a board member and president of the Minnesota Valley Country Club, as well as a board member for Erik’s Ranch.
Advisory Board
Mac Lewis
Mac is founder and CEO of Field Solutions, a field services staffing company. Mac has over 35 years of executive management experience in technology based products and services companies. He was President and CEO of Computer Network Technology (CNT) for ten years during which time it went from a pre-revenue start-up to a NASDAQ-traded public company, with products and services for large enterprise data networking clients. Prior to CNT, he was founder and CEO of The Systems Center - a mainframe oriented software product company, and also had 14 years with IBM in management, sales, systems engineering and product management. Prior to co-founding FieldSolutions, Mac was founder and a partner of Sherpa Partners, a technology investment firm. He serves as a Board Member of several early stage private companies as well as several non-profit organizations. He is a graduate of Princeton University.
Larry Jordan
Larry Jordan is a welcome member of the Erik’s Ranch board of advisors. Famous for his involvement with horses and rodeos all over North America for more than 30 years, Jordan is an inductee in both the Montana Pro Rodeo Hall of Fame (saddle bronc riding) and Montana State University-Billings Hall of Fame (football and rodeo). He makes things happen. He founded the American Canadian Quarter Horse Futurity, the World of Rodeo newspaper, the North American Rodeo Commission, and the Department of Public Relations for the National High School Rodeo Association, raising $1,000,000 in funds from major sponsors for this last cause. He also established the Billings Night Rodeo, managing everything from concept and land acquisition to facilities construction and marketing.
Jordan has a degree in Education from Montana State University-Billings and still substitute teaches today. He has been active in ranch management for over a decade in the Livingston area, and both stands quarter horse stallions and has more than a dozen mares (quarter horse and paint). Many of his colts are active in racing all over the United States and Canada.
Never one to rest on his laurels, Jordan has also developed his artistic side, capturing his love of the rodeo and the outdoors in dramatic western and wildlife pieces for commission and sale.
Jordan has served on the board of the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association and is presently director of special events for the Montana Pro Rodeo Hall and Wall of Fame. He is also a trustee for the Montana Cowboy Hall of Fame and Western Heritage Center.
Tom Gerrard
Tom Gerrard is a member of Erik’s Ranch Advisory Board. He is well known in Montana’s Big Sky Country and has an extensive and successful 35-year business history, which included the formation, start-up and eventual sale of eight successful entrepreneurial businesses – in telecommunications, real estate and construction.
These companies include, in telecom: Mobile ComNet; Coverage Plus Antenna Systems, Inc.; Advanced Radio Communications Services, Inc.; and Air Space Radio Systems, a top ten Motorola dealer in the U.S. In construction, his companies included: C.M.H Corp.; Consolidated Wire Rope and Rigging, Inc.; and Gerrard and LaRoche, Inc. His real estate experience includes ownership of Gerrard Properties, a developer of real estate and rental properties in Florida, Washington D.C. and Montana.
Though semi-retired today, Gerrard is constantly on the go for pursuits of both business and pleasure. For the past seven years he has been chairman of the board of Interlaken, Inc., an environmental construction firm doing restoration work in the Florida everglades. He also is a Trustee on the John Hopkins Medical Board and serves on both its finance and real estate development committees. And he’s held the highest positions at several telecom-related associations and served as a communications consultant to several of America’s major corporations.
Among his present-day pursuits, Gerrard is passionate about classic car restoration, with collections in both the Big Sky area of Montana, and in his second home in Manalapan, Florida (where he is presently mayor).
