Darin Anderson
President & Managing Partner
Darin Anderson is a farmer from the Valley City area. He is currently serving his third term as President of the North Dakota Corn Growers Association and also is the chairman of the Northern Corn Development Corporation. Prior to these leadership roles he served for two years as Vice President of the ND Corn Growers Association, chairman and vice chairman of the Barnes County Marketing Club and also chairman of the Barnes County Crop Improvement Association. He graduated in 1999 with a B.S. Degree Agricultural Economics from North Dakota State University with an emphasis in Farm Management and AgriBusiness. He currently farms near Valley City with his father. He and his wife Julia live on the farm and have three children.
Larry Hoffmann
Managing Partner
Mr. Larry Hoffmann is a semi-retired farmer and participates in a joint venture with his son and brother, growing corn, soybeans, wheat, alfalfa and also leasing their remaining cowherd. Mr. Hoffman attained a Bachelor of Science degree from North Dakota State University in 1966, majoring in animal science, with minors in agricultural economics and general agriculture. He currently serves as at large director of North Dakota Corn Growers and as a member of the National Corn Growers Research and Business Development Action Team. Mr. Hoffmann volunteers as a First Responder, on several Cooperative Boards and as a 4-H leader, among other community involvement positions. He is also a United States Army veteran.
Duane Dows
Managing Partner
Mr. Duane Dows farms in partnership with his brother, son and nephew, raising corn and soybeans and incorporating extensive use of irrigation and drain tile. Mr. Dows attained a Bachelor’s Degree in Agricultural Economics from North Dakota State University in 1971. He currently serves as Chairman of Page Development Corporation, on the Board of Directors of North Dakota State University Research Foundation and as a member of the Page Community Club. Mr. Dows formerly served as Chairman of Our Savior Lutheran Church Council, Chairman of Page Properties Corporation, Chairman of Dakota Renewable Fuels and Chairman of the North Dakota Corn Utilization Council.
Bill Whipple
Managing Partner
Incorporates no-till farming practices raising corn and soybeans on his farm. He manages 300 acres of CRP and operates a custom pasturing business on 4,800 acres of native pasture with rotational grazing units. He has been using no-till farming practices since 1985 and established his rotational pasture systems in 1980. He has been a member of the South Dakota Corn Utilization board since 2008. In addition to his position on the SDCUC board, Mr. Whipple also served on the South Dakota Corn Growers Association board and held positions of vice president and chairman. He was also a founding director of Northern Growers LLC. Mr. Whipple attained a Bachelor of Science degree in Animal Science from South Dakota State University. He served in the U.S. Army for 4 years as a helicopter pilot before returning to the family ranch in 1973.
David H. Bednar
Managing Partner
Mr. Bednar has vast business experience as a senior executive in various organizations. He currently serves as President & CEO of DHB Holdings, Inc. and Roseport Resources, LLC, President of Continental Nitrogen & Resources Corp. and Viking Explosives LLC, and Chief Manager of Hy-Energy Systems, LLC. Mr. Bednar also serves on the Board of Directors of Red Diamond Nitrogen, LLC and Magnetation, Inc. He is also involved in various industry and trade associations, serving as Chairman of the Institute of Makers of Explosives. Mr. Bednar graduated from the Colorado School of Mines in 1961 with a degree in Mining Engineering.
Doug Stone
Managing Partner
Doug Stone is President and CEO of Consolidated Sourcing Solutions and has been in this role since July 2010. Consolidated Sourcing Solutions is a partnership established in June 2010 that procures and manages over 1 million tons of fertilizer for 3 large agricultural cooperatives located in South Dakota, Nebraska and Iowa. Prior to this current role, Doug spent 21 years with Terra Industries, a global nitrogen manufacturing company, in a variety of executive sales, procurement, and management roles; most recently as their Senior Vice President, Sales and Marketing. As Senior Vice President, Sales and Marketing, Doug had responsibility for top line revenue of over $2 billion and the sale of over 6 million tons of manufactured fertilizers. Prior to this, Doug was Vice President, Strategic Planning and Business Development for Terra. Doug earned a B.B.A. in Marketing from the University of Iowa in 1988, and completed his M.B.A., with honors, from the University of South Dakota in 1997.
Admiral Bill Owens
Managing Partner
Bill Owens is the Chairman of AEA Investors ASIA located in Hong Kong and executive Chairman of Prometheus, Beijing. He serves on the Polycom, Wipro and Viasystems Group boards, is the Vice Chairman of the NYSE for Asia, and is currently the Chairman of CenturyLink Telecom (the third largest telecoms company in the US). He is the non-executive chairman of the private companies, Yangtze, Intelius, and FlowMobile.
From 2004 to 2006, Owens was Chief Executive Officer and Vice Chairman of Nortel Networks. Owens took the helm of Nortel following the disclosure of accounting issues in April 2004. Under his leadership, Nortel was reestablished as a strong, stable, ethical fortune 500 company growing strongly and on the path to reestablish leadership in the telecommunications and enterprise IT global marketplace.
Prior to joining Nortel in 2004, Owens was Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of Teledesic LLC, a Bill Gates/Craig McCaw company to bring worldwide broadband through an extensive satellite network and before that, was the President, Chief Operating Officer and Vice Chairman of Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC).
Prior to joining SAIC, Owens was Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the second-ranking military officer in the United States. He had responsibility for the reorganization and restructuring of the armed forces in the post- Cold War era. Widely recognized for bringing commercial high technology into the Department of Defense for military applications, Owens was the architect of the Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA), an advanced systems technology approach to military operations that is the most significant change in the system of requirements, budgets and technology for the four armed forces since World War II.
From 1991 to 1993, Owens was the deputy chief of Naval Operations for Resources, Warfare Requirements and Assessments. Owens served as commander of the U.S. Sixth Fleet in 1990 and 1991 during Operation Desert Storm in Iraq. Between 1988 and 1991, Owens served as senior military assistant to Secretaries of Defense Frank Carlucci and Dick Cheney, the senior military position in the Office of the Secretary of Defense. In 1988, Owens was the director of the Office of Program Appraisal for the Secretary of the Navy. In 1987, he served as commander of Submarine Group Six, the Navy’s largest submarine group with 20 strategic ballistic missile submarines, 45 nuclear attack submarines, and more than 15,000 men and women. Earlier in his career, he commanded Submarine Squadron Four, and the nuclear submarines USS Sam Houston and USS City of Corpus Christi.
Owens has written more than 50 articles on national security and authored the book “High Seas.” His book, “Lifting the Fog of War,” was published in April 2000 and a revision “Lifting the Fog of War” was published in Mandarin in 2009. He is a 1962 graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy with a bachelor’s degree in mathematics, holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in politics, philosophy and economics from Oxford University, and a master’s degree in management from George Washington University. On December 1, 2004, Bill Owens received the Intrepid Salute Award in recognition of his business achievements and support of important philanthropic activities. He has been awarded the “Legion d’Honore” by France and the highest awards given to foreign citizens by the countries of Indonesia and Sweden. Owens was the North Dakota Citizen of the year, the “Roughrider” in 1996 and is the 1996 David Sarnoff award winner for his contribution to advanced technology. He was the George Washington University Distinguished Graduate in 2001 and was recognized as one of The 50 Most Powerful People in Networking by Network World, one of the industry’s premier publications. He was awarded by NACD as one of the 100 Best Board Member in the United States for 2011.
Owens has served on the Board of Directors of over 20 public companies and has founded five technology companies; Lumera, Extend America, Amerilink, Yangtze, and Prometheus. Owens’ public boards included Daimler Chrysler AG, BAT, Nortel Networks, Wipro, and Telstra. He is a member of the board of Brookings Institution, Rand Corp. Asia, and has served on the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and Carnegie Boards. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
Since 2007, Owens has been very active in significant philanthropy to foster Chinese American relations including forming and funding continuing dialogues between the most senior retired officers in the US and Chinese militaries and similar dialogues between very senior economists.