Mead Treadwell is the former Lieutenant Governer for the State of Alaska and former chair of the United States Arctic Research Commission.

A longtime Alaskan leader in Arctic research, policy, and exploration, over three decades of residency in Alaska, he has advanced responsible natural-resource development, environmental stewardship, and post–Cold War international cooperation. Across business, government, and academia, he has helped launch research programs in technology, ecology, social science, and public policy, with practical emphasis on strategic and defense issues facing Alaska and the broader Arctic, management of commonly owned resources, and the integration of Arctic transport and telecommunications.

Treadwell is Senior Fellow at the Institute of the North, founded by former Alaska Governor Walter J. Hickel, where he previously served as the Institute’s first full-time Managing Director and as Adjunct Professor of Business when the Institute was part of Alaska Pacific University. He co-authored “Missile Defense, the Space Relationship, and the Twenty-First Century” for the Independent Working Group on Missile Defense and was lead author of “Why the Arctic Matters,” a 2009 Commonwealth North study. He is a frequent contributor to conferences and reports on Arctic and security policy.

In business, Treadwell is Chairman and CEO of Venture Ad Astra, an Anchorage-based firm investing in geospatial and imaging technologies, and non-executive chairman of Immersive Media Company, a subsidiary of a publicly listed corporation (IMC.V) that Venture Ad Astra helped refinance in 2003. Since 1982, he has invested independently and in conjunction with Governor Hickel in ventures including Yukon Pacific Corporation (a natural-gas pipeline company sold to CSX Corporation in 1989), Digimarc Corporation (NASDAQ: DMRC), and Owner State Wireless, LLC, which developed a wireless joint venture with Nextel. He serves on the boards of Ellicott Dredge Enterprises, IW Financial—a leading ESG research and consulting firm—and Ryan Air Alaska, an Alaska Native-owned cargo airline serving rural communities.

From 1990 to 1994, Treadwell served as Deputy Commissioner of Alaska’s Department of Environmental Conservation in the Hickel Administration, and represented the State of Alaska in three circumpolar government forums: the eight-nation Arctic Environmental Protection Strategy, the Arctic Council that followed, and the Northern Forum of regional governors. He joined Governor Hickel at the 1992 United Nations Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro. From 1994 to 1999, he sat on the board of the Alaska Science and Technology Foundation, which supported the design of the Alaska Regional Research Vessel and initial financing for the Kodiak Launch Complex. He is a board member of the Prince William Sound Science Center, home to the Prince William Sound Oil Spill Recovery Institute—an endowed program he helped Congress establish after the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster. As an alternate Trustee of the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill Trustee Council and later a member of its Public Advisory Group, he helped guide land acquisitions, restoration science, and ecosystem modeling in Prince William Sound, Kodiak, and Kachemak Bay/Cook Inlet.

Treadwell helped the Alaska State Chamber of Commerce establish the Siberia–Alaska Gateway Project, which opened the U.S.–Russia border through the Friendship Flight and a series of exchanges in 1988–1989. He led two expeditions to Wrangell Island in the Russian Arctic in 1990; headed a U.S. team of nuclear-safety experts to the Bilibino Nuclear Power Plant in Chukotka in 1993; and, in 1994, hosted RADEX, the first circumpolar radiation-release response exercise. The Siberia-Alaska Trading Company, which he founded and chaired, pioneered eco-tourism, ship-based tours, and science support in Chukotka throughout the 1990s. He serves on the board of the Alaska Siberia Research Center, was elected a Fellow National of The Explorers Club in 2002, and chairs the Club’s North Pacific Alaska Chapter.

Civically, Treadwell is a past president of the Alaska World Affairs Council, the Japan America Society of Alaska, and the Visual Arts Center of Alaska. He is president of the Millennium Society, an international charity raising scholarship funds, which has established science-education scholarships for young Alaskans in memory of his late wife. A Rotarian, he serves on the board of the Great Alaska Council of the Boy Scouts of America and is vice president of Commonwealth North, Alaska’s public-policy forum.

As a key member of The North World Approach, Treadwell brings three decades of hands-on experience in governance, international law, and multilateral diplomacy. His record in shaping cooperative frameworks among Arctic stakeholders—combined with technical leadership in geospatial innovation, transport and telecommunications integration, and environmental stewardship—will be instrumental in advancing a governance model that promotes sustainability, rigorous science, meaningful Indigenous partnership, resilient infrastructure, and long-term geopolitical stability across the circumpolar North.