About the Author

Michael has helped start and direct businesses, which at the time of his service totaled over $2.0 billion in sales and the same amount in assets, and now greatly exceed these values. His service has included aiding in the start, governance, support and sustaining of the three of the largest food processor businesses of the upper Midwest. This includes American Crystal Sugar, Progold Corn Processors and Dakota Growers Pasta Company. He served on the Board of Directors of Meritcare before its merger with Sanford Health. During his service, Meritcare was the largest integrated health system between Minneapolis and Spokane. He also served as the Chairman of the Finance Committee for the Dakota Medical Foundation with assets exceeding $100M. As part of his involvement in the sugar industry, he served as a lobbyist for 23 years, including the National Chairman of the American Sugarbeet Growers Legislative Committee. In these capacities he shepherded the establishment of the first inclusion of sugar in the Federal Farm Bill, and two more successful following inclusions.

Mike owned and operated a commercial farm operation, which expanded to 5,500 acres. He successfully farmed until 2,001, and then went on to form two more businesses. That included Agriceutical Resources, which was an importer of pharmaceuticals for supply for compounding pharmacies, until its sale in 2010. The second business formed, as a founder with his son Alex in 2003, is Pedigree Technologies LLC, which is a software company specializing in the “Machine to Machine (aka M2M & IoT)” communications industry. At its startup and expansion, it was among the first nationally recognized companies to provide the new business model of “Software as a Service (SaaS)” to monitor, locate and track customer assets, which now is the standard. Pedigree was on the cutting edge of accessing software services over the internet. During the establishment and expansion of the business, the company received many prestigious awards and recognitions. The company received inclusion for 4 years running in the “Inc. 5,000” companies. It was also recognized with prestigious “Frost Sullivan Awards” for customer value and product innovation in 2011 and 2016 respectively. For 5 years running “M2M” magazine recognized Pedigree in their lists of the top 25 global software companies and top 100 IoT companies. It was also been recognized by “Business Insider” magazine as the largest technology company based in their state of operations. At the time of their divestiture in 2020, it continued as profitable and one of the top three in market share of this new and highly demanded service technology.

In summary, his service on the board of directors spans almost 50 years of continuous uninterrupted board of director service, and includes a range of businesses from small startup companies to some of the largest businesses in the upper Midwest region. His experience as a member of boards of directors includes processing, import, export, technology, regulatory policies, software as a service, the largest healthcare network of the region and the direction of several charitable organizations from small to among the largest of the region. In this capacity, he has experienced a wide spectrum of board of director activities, including executing fiduciary responsibilities, company capitalization, business planning and the purchases and sale of companies and/or assets, as well as dealing with crisis. He has directly served and chaired in the search, hiring, termination and retirement of top executives, and personally helped develop employment contracts and incentive compensation programs. This work included being the hands-on leader in the development of the first time management was allowed ownership in farmer owned cooperatives, which are among some of our country’s largest companies. He has extensive knowledge of what causes the successes, failures and disappointments of companies, and the mistakes and correct choices boards of directors make. He is driven by the belief the “buck” really does stop with the board of directors, and it is their decisions, which primarily and profoundly affect the future of any company. In short, to have a good company, you must have a good board of directors.

Oh yes, on the lighter side, he has been a professional musician/singer all his life and composed, produced, performed and recorded a composition, which was included in 2024 in the Apple Music list of the highly coveted “Top 10”, recommended new Americana music compositions.