If you happened to visit the Minnesota Twins’ spring training facility in Fort Myers (FL) last month, you may have purchased a FINNEGANS beer, available this year at Hammond Stadium for the first time. You might be surprised to learn that, with that purchase, you also would have helped supply fresh produce through the Harry Chapin Food Bank.

Minnesota-based FINNEGANS, owned by Jacquie Berglund ’87, was the first for-profit beer company in the world to give away 100% of its profits, a feat accomplished through the FINNEGANS Community fund—a sustainable business model through which the company can make a difference in the community. Last year alone, FINNEGANS raised over $100,000 that went to support the purchase of fresh produce at local food shelves. This unique beer business intrigued Buffie Blesi ’90 ’97, who had done volunteer work at FINNEGANS over the years, and who turned to Berglund in 2009 for networking advice when she started her business coaching company, KnowledgeSphere, Inc. In turn, Berglund called on Blesi for help in managing FINNEGANS’ future—a mutually beneficial way of reconnecting since their first meeting years ago as Augsburg students.

As a result, FINNEGANS has rebounded nicely (growing by an average of 40% each year), and Blesi continues to help Berglund strategize about its growth—looking at new markets and products, determining who should be on the team and how to engage them in the company’s mission, and earning more profits in order to make a greater impact in the world. Recently, FINNEGANS received two special awards: Social Entrepreneur Award for Minnesota Business, and the Small Business of the Year Award from the Minneapolis Chamber of Commerce.

In addition to her coaching work, Blesi has worked in recent years with other Auggie alumnae and Donna McLean to establish the AWE (Augsburg Women Engaged) program, which provides opportunities for Auggie women to connect, learn, and give.

The Wild West of Information Technology

Dan Terrio ’90 feels privileged to have gotten his start in IT at Augsburg in the early ‘90s, when he managed what was then called the Academic Computing department. Since those days, however, electronic devices have become ever more prevalent in all aspects of college life, to the point where an IT staff is expected to support a BYOD (bring your own device) environment—less controlled and more “wild West.”

Now, as chief information officer at Whitman College, a position he has held since May 2011, Terrio is committed to collaborating with all of the college’s constituents in order to understand their “business” and needs more fully, and acquire devices that help them do their work. In addition to the interpersonal and communication skills required to do this, he knows the IT staff must also be able to influence some decisions up-front. Of course, balancing security and privacy issues with a traditional culture of openness is always a challenge in IT.

Terrio has taken steps at Whitman to enable IT to work in partnership with faculty to identify innovative ways to tap into the potential that technology has to enhance teaching and learning. Though he may see himself as a technology skeptic, believing that education is at its best when it is done in face-to-face faculty-student interactions in a small residential environment, he knows full well that technology will need to promote those interactions. And who knows what devices we’ll see in the next 5–10 years to help keep IT departments on their toes?

Paulson Runs Marathons in All 50 States and DC

In 2009, after finished his first official marathon, on Lithia Park Trail (FL), he wasn’t so surprised that he had been able to finish, even though he had had to walk much of the last five miles. But he was surprised that, in the process, he had managed to avoid a four-foot black snake and plenty of horse manure (especially pungent in the day’s heat), and that the prize for finishing was an “ugly kiln-baked campfire mug” and a knit ski cap with machine-sewn palm trees on it—hardly useful for this Floridian. But that event was the beginning of a long string of events, and he finished in marathons in all 50 states and Washington, D.C. He recalls thinking many times while running, if he didn’t hurt, then he just wasn’t running fast enough.

Competing in all 50 states has helped Paulson level out his emotions, and made for some interesting encounters—like obtaining an endearing autograph from author/runner Dean Karnazes (who wrote “Ultramarathonman”), and running with a 22-year-old woman in the Missoula marathon who ran the entire race with crutches as she endeavored to compete in all 50 states as well (and is in the Guiness record books).  About 10 of Paulson’s marathons were 24-hour races (ultramarathons), and he would run all night (with short naps, lots of coffee, and regular eating), then sleep for 14 hours the following day, hardly able to walk afterwards for two or three days. He had to switch shoes throughout the day to “keep his feet confused” so as not to feel the pain. But running this long makes him feel alive and vibrant.

When Paulson is asked about his days at Augsburg, he remembers the faculty as very caring and decent Christian people, whose care made him feel special. His father, George Pauluk ’55, also attended Augsburg, and Neil feels fortunate in having been able to establish a scholarship at Augsburg in his father’s honor.

Following an early career as a lawyer, focusing on trial practice (family law, criminal defense, and personal injury) and on car accidents, Paulson retired in 2000 and is now director of a private mortgage investment fund affiliated with Equity Trust Company. Paulson also enjoys running the 5K, coaching soccer at the YMCA, and weight training

The American College of Physicians-Minnesota Chapter presented the 2012 Laureate award to Dr. Amit K. Ghosh MBA ’12, of Mayo Clinic at its annual scientific session in Minneapolis on November 2.

Ghosh is a professor of medicine at Mayo Clinic College of Medicine and a consultant in the division of general internal medicine. He is the current director of the International Clinic.

The Laureate Award honors an Internal Medicine physician and member of the American College of Physicians who has demonstrated an abiding commitment to excellence in medical care, education or research.

Ghosh received his medical training and completed his internship in India, graduating from the Jawaharlal Institute of Post Graduate Medical Education. He came to the United States in 1993 and completed a fellowship at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis in Nephrology and hypertension.

Ghosh was the previous editor-in-chief of two Mayo internal medicine books, namely the Mayo Clinic Internal Medicine Review Book and the Mayo Clinic Internal Medicine Concise Textbook.

When several high school students visited her second-grade class for a week to help each one write their own book, Sarah (Norton) Solmonson ’10 wrote not just one, but five of them, including what she considers to be the first draft of the book she just published this past summer. The book, Taking Flight, gives the reader a window into Solmonson’s life, with particular focus on the joy of working with her father in their basement for six years to build his own VP-1 airplane, the excitement of flying with him often, and the painful loss she endured when, due to a wind fluke, the plane went down three months after its first flight, killing her father instantly. That was when Sarah was 16.

Writing the book, then, was a natural outlet. Grateful that her parents read to her often, Solmonson credits her Augsburg experience with instilling in her the drive and discipline required to write the book. She says pushing herself through night and weekend classes while working full-time was the most exhausting and rewarding period of her life thus far. She especially remembers the challenge of Professor Cowgill’s English and Irish Literature course, and still relishes his encouraging words about her D.H. Lawrence paper—“Sarah, you are a writer.” (She keeps the paper with Cowgill’s comments in her “motivational tool kit.”). When she stood at the Augsburg Bookstore on graduation day, with aspirations to be an author, she thought once again, “Some day…”

Fond of narrative non-fiction and memoir genres, Solmonson is convinced that being an author is the career she wants to continue to pursue, and completing her first book has given her an amazing sense of accomplishment. The subject of her second book will be the life-changing trip through Germany and Poland that she took with Professors Cowgill and DeVries, along with Auggie classmates (many of them now long-term friends), in connection with a dual course in the History and Literature of Post WWII.

Her book is available through Amazon.