About Former Lt. Governor Mead Treadwell
Mead Treadwell, Connecticut born, is a 1982 graduate of the Harvard Business School, a 1978 graduate of Yale. He was the 11th Lieutenant Governor of Alaska (2010-2014) and Chair of the US Arctic Research Commission (2006-2010) under Presidents George W Bush and Barack Obama. In those positions, he helped develop and implement the US Arctic policy adopted in 2009, expanded Asian observer participation in the Arctic Council, and funded and advanced the eight-nation Arctic Marine Shipping Assessment, which set a blueprint for marine safety and reliability in the newly-accessible Arctic Ocean.
In advancing Arctic cooperation and sustainable development, he chairs the satellite firm Iridium’s Polar Advisory Board, co-chairs the Washington, DC based Woodrow Wilson Center’s Polar Initiative, chairs the Iceland-based Arctic Circle’s Mission Council on Shipping and Ports, and is a member of the International Advisory Board of the UK-based Polar Research and Policy Initiative and the Arctic Today online news service. He is a frequent speaker in academic and military settings regarding Arctic economic and security issues. He was also a member of the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on the Arctic that prepared the Arctic Investment Protocol: Guidelines for Responsible Investment in the Arctic.
As Alaska Lt. Governor and USARC Commissioner, he has been an advocate for preservation of indigenous language and culture, and for economic and security cooperation in the North Pacific region. As chair of the Arctic Circle’s Mission Council on Shipping and Ports, he led development of pending bipartisan legislation in the US Congress to create a US Arctic Seaway Development Corporation. During the toughest time in US-Russian relations in a generation, Treadwell successfully pushed for a vessel traffic agreement in the Bering Straits, accepted by the International Maritime Organization.
The Government of Japan awarded him the Order of the Rising Sun with Gold Rays and Neck Ribbons in 2020, and he was bestowed Japan’s Foreign Minister’s Award for building US Japan relations in energy, science and security in 2005. He was named a Fellow National of the Explorers Club in 2002 and now sits on that organization’s board of directors. The Northern Forum, an association of circumpolar governors, bestowed their Walter J. Hickel Medal on Treadwell in 2015, and the Alaska SeaLife Center bestowed their lifetime Ocean Leadership Award to Treadwell in 2018.
In business, Treadwell is a serial entrepreneur. He is currently Chair and CEO of Qilak LNG, a Lloyds Energy Company, formed to bring stranded North American Arctic gas reserves to Asian markets directly by icebreaking tanker. He is Vice Chair, Alaska, of the Alaska to Alberta Railway, a new rail link proposed to tie the Alaska Railroad to the rail grid of North America. Earlier in his career, he served as Vice President, Secretary and Treasurer of an earlier proposed LNG project, Yukon Pacific Corporation, acquired by CSX Corporation in 1989.
He was a founding officer of NASDAQ-listed Digimarc Corporation, and formerly TVX-listed Immersive Media, which pioneered StreetView for Google. He is chair of NASDAQ-listed Iridium’s Polar Advisory Board, a board member of Alaska air-cargo carrier Ryan Air, Arctic private equity firm Pt Capital, and Vice-Chair, Alaska of the Alaska to Alberta Railway. He formerly served on the board of Baltimore-based Ellicott Dredges. He is a co-author of Missile Defense, the Space Relationship, and the Twenty-First Century as well as lead author of Why the Arctic Matters, a Commonwealth North 2009 study.