From the ground(man) up

Roseau Electric Cooperative’s Ryan Severson is no stranger to the territory he serves. Ever since he was a kid growing up on a farm near Wannaska, he’s been energized by the region – hunting and fishing northern Minnesota’s lands and lakes, cutting across the terrain on snowmobile or ATV. But as the cooperative’s newest general manager, he’s now in charge of delivering power to the region that first gave him his own.

“I'm honored. It's a great place to work. We've got great employees and a great group of directors,” said Severson, who started leadership on Jan. 1 after nearly a decade as the co-op’s assistant general manager. “Everyone has a common goal in mind: We’re there to serve the member. We’re there to help them.”

Severson has been a part of the Roseau Electric Cooperative (REC) team since 1992, when he was hired as a groundman to assist the line crews. He was fresh off four years working with his family’s electrical contracting business, which he joined after earning his business degree in St. Cloud, Minnesota.

When the opportunity with REC opened, he recognized it wasn’t an exact fit for his master-electrician expertise, but he knew what the co-op stood for, and he realized it was a place where he could grow. “When I grew up on the farm, I understood the electric co-op and what they did for the rural community,” Severson said. “What I appreciated and understood from the beginning was the service side of it.”

After two years as a groundman, Severson was recruited to the member services side of the co-op as an electrician and director of the load management program. There, he thrived. For the next 15 years, he formed relationships with residential and commercial members, helping them find smarter ways to use their electricity.

In his early member service days, Severson remembers adding around 100 services each year – a high number for such a remote co-op.

“A lot of them were people that were working at Polaris, Marvin Windows, Central Boiler – companies in our area – and they were moving from apartment buildings, migrating into homes and building small communities,” he remembered. “What's changed since that time is they kind of found their saturation point.”

REC’s growth has slowed since then, but its level of service hasn’t. In fact, the co-op continues to find new ways to enhance quality of life for its members. One of Severson’s largest endeavors as assistant general manager was attaining the partnerships and federal funding needed for a new fiber internet subsidiary, aptly named NorthStream Fiber. In 2019, the co-op started installing broadband throughout areas of its territory, offering up-to-one-gigabit internet as well as phone and TV service to those who were interested.

This year, NorthStream Fiber is set to hit 1,000 customers, and the co-op is still a couple of construction seasons aways from satisfying its full build-out plan.

“People are very happy,” Severson said. “We're building a fiber-to-the-home network, and we’re also utilizing it on the electric side as far as making our grid smarter and being able to monitor things on our electrical side.”

Severson has always been immersed in the hands-on process of operations. As general manager, his purview will widen to include the nuances of co-op policy, finance and more. Fortunately, his predecessor, former general manager and long-time colleague Tracey Stoll, will remain by his side at the co-op for a few more months before Stoll’s official retirement, ensuring a strong transition.

“Ryan brings to the general manager role a long history of cooperative experience,” Stoll said. “That experience, built from within our walls, will allow him to successfully and seamlessly take over the leadership of our cooperative – from our core business of providing electricity to our members to the exciting future of our NorthStream Fiber division. The confidence and optimism he models is contagious, and I look forward to observing where he leads our very capable employees.”

As a northern Minnesotan with a love of outdoor adventure, Severson isn’t afraid to blaze a trail – but he knows a trail means nothing if there’s no one following behind.

“We just have a great team,” he said. “I'm honored to work with them, and hopefully I can help steer them toward continued success.”