GRAND FORKS – Seven professionals from the Grand Forks region have been named to the Prairie Business magazine’s 2025 list of “40 Under 40.” Honorees must be 40 or younger by the end of the year.

They are: Dustin Fanfulik, civil engineer and vice president at Widseth in East Grand Forks, Minnesota; Travor Fredrickson, senior project manager and senior electrical engineer with CMTA in Grand Forks; Kelby Laxdal, principal civil engineer at Houston Engineering, Inc. in Grand Forks; Courtney McNamee, director of Revenue Cycle and Reimbursement at Altru Health System in Grand Forks; Maggie Melvin, director of Admissions at University of Minnesota Crookston in Crookston, Minnesota; Geoff Slick, Rural Water practice leader at AE2S in Grand Forks; and Sean Sorteberg, MultiMarket Semiconductor director at Digikey in Thief River Falls, Minnesota.

They will be honored at an event in the fall, along with Prairie Business magazine’s other honorees for “Top 25 Women in Business” and “Leaders and Legacies.”

The 40 Under 40 list highlights exceptional professionals, including industry executives, administrators, community leaders, entrepreneurs and more.

As a civil engineer and vice president at Widseth, Fanfulik, 36, is known for his professionalism and sound engineering judgment. He prioritizes client needs and consistently delivers high-quality results.

He serves as consulting city engineer for Pembina, North Dakota, and several northwest Minnesota communities. His work includes master planning for development, feasibility studies, assessments, design, inspections, and comprehensive project management. His experience spans infrastructure and extends to schools, campground expansions, and commercial and industrial developments across both states. He has also collaborated with the Minnesota and North Dakota Departments of Transportation on major infrastructure projects.

As a shareholder, Fanfulik brings vision, integrity, and a collaborative spirit to his work. His dedication to mentorship, community involvement and engineering excellence makes him a vital contributor to Widseth’s success and a standout young professional in the field.

Contributed

Fredrickson, 37, is a senior project manager and senior electrical engineer with CMTA’s paper Midwest office in Grand Forks.

Fredrickson began his career at Ulteig Engineers in Fargo as a substation engineer, designing substations and windfarm grounding systems. He joined CMTA in 2013 to help grow the Grand Forks office and has since designed electrical systems for hospitals, wellness centers, schools and commercial buildings. He focuses on delivering innovative, sustainable solutions that reduce carbon footprints by combining proven design principles with the latest green technologies.

Passionate about mentoring the next generation, Fredrickson regularly shares his expertise with engineering students, emphasizing that much of real-world engineering is learned on the job. His outreach has helped recruit several local engineers from UND and NDSU. He’s also active in the Grand Forks–East Grand Forks Chamber of Commerce, supporting both business development and broader community initiatives.

Laxdal, 37, is a principal civil engineer with Houston Engineering, Inc. (HEI) in Grand Forks, bringing nearly two decades of experience in transportation and municipal design across North Dakota and Minnesota. Specializing in urban, multimodal transportation corridors, Laxdal is known for his leadership in shaping infrastructure that supports vibrant, connected communities.

He began his career with CPS in Grand Forks, contributing to major urban reconstruction projects including Columbia Road, 42nd Street, and 48th Street, along with a variety of municipal utility and transportation initiatives.

Joining HEI in 2018, Laxdal quickly advanced from project engineer to principal, managing key projects for the North Dakota Department of Transportation and the City of Grand Forks. His portfolio includes I-94 reconstruction near Beach, North Dakota, highway improvements, and numerous city infrastructure upgrades. Currently, he leads several transformative efforts such as the U.S. Highway 81 reconstruction, southwest Grand Forks master planning, and the Mouse River Enhanced Flood Protection Project in Minot.

Contributed

Advertisement

McNamee, 34, is the director of Revenue Cycle and Reimbursement at Altru Health System. Since joining Altru in March 2024, she has combined a patient-first mindset with strong financial leadership, introducing programs that reduce costs for patients and advancing e-payment technology through MyChart. Her ability to balance patient needs with organizational goals has quickly set her apart as a leader who drives both innovation and results.

McNamee is committed to developing people. Her team demonstrates strong engagement, and under her leadership, more staff across multiple departments have earned professional finance certifications.

Her influence extends beyond Altru. As the former president and active member of the Minnesota Healthcare Finance Management Association, she is recognized across the industry as a thought leader. She is frequently invited to speak on critical issues, such as price transparency, patient engagement, the No Surprises Act and reimbursement enhancement, representing both Altru and the broader healthcare community.

Advertisement

Melvin, 29, director of Admissions at the University of Minnesota Crookston, brings energy, vision and a genuine commitment to helping students find their path.

Melvin began her career at the University of North Dakota School of Law, serving as director of Admissions and Records. There, she gained valuable experience working with diverse students and faculty, learning how thoughtful admissions practices can shape a university’s culture. At UMN Crookston, she leads the admissions team with a focus on making the process welcoming and accessible for all.

Melvin is pursuing an Ed.D. in Educational Leadership with a specialization in Higher Education, expecting to graduate in 2026. Her commitment reflects both personal development and a desire to advance the field for others. Through her leadership and dedication, Melvin is shaping admissions today while paving the way for future generations of students and educators.

Slick, 39, began his career at AE2S as an intern and during the past 16 years has risen to Rural Water practice leader. In this role, he leads a team of engineers and technical staff providing specialized expertise to rural water districts across the Midwest. Slick’s experience spans management, mentorship, project leadership, hydraulics and strategic planning, with a focus on concept planning, funding development, project coordination, regional system planning, mergers and construction management.

He has worked with over 20 rural and regional water clients, often acting as an extension of their staff. Notable projects include the Red River Valley Water Supply Project, the Western Area Water Supply Project, and the development of Minnesota’s first new rural water district in over 40 years — the West Central Regional Water District serving Clay, Norman and Polk counties.

Slick serves on the North Dakota Water Users Board and volunteers as a youth hockey coach. He is committed to continuous professional growth and is active in the National Rural Water Association, the National Society of Professional Engineers, the North Dakota Rural Water Association and the Tau Beta Pi Engineering Honor Society.

Contributed

Sorteberg, 36, is an accomplished leader in the supply chain and semiconductor industries, currently serving as director of Multi-Market Semiconductor at DigiKey. In his role, he directs global product segment strategy, leads a comprehensive semiconductor portfolio designed to outperform market growth expectations and oversees all product management and asset management functions. He manages aggressive business performance metrics across cross-functional teams, while building trusted relationships with supplier executives and key partners.

With more than 13 years of progressive experience in supply chain management, Sorteberg has demonstrated expertise across distribution, manufacturing and procurement. Before his current director role, he served as the manager of the technology business at DigiKey, overseeing all procurement activity in the semiconductor business unit.

Sorteberg is a strong leader on DigiKey’s supplier management team. He excels at helping his team members grow and collaborating with other departments to achieve mutual goals. He also excels at developing strong relationships with executive-level connections at many of DigiKey’s supplier organizations, building engagement and collaboration across companies.

CLEVELAND, Ohio — For many households that do not otherwise keep plants, a cut Christmas tree may be the only one they actively care for all year, watered daily and monitored carefully.

And every December, families arrive at Sugargrove Tree Farm in Ashland, ready to make a once-a-year decision: which tree will carry their lights and ornaments and serve as a backdrop for holiday selfies. I recently spoke Bob Smith, who owns and operates the cut-your-own tree farm, about his tree care advice.

Read all of Susan Brownstein’s columns here.

Smith has a short list of rules for customers once their tree is home, and the most important one is simple.

“Water,” he says. “Always keep it watered. The bottom of the trunk should never be exposed to air.” When a freshly cut tree sits dry for too long, sap seals the cut surface, forming a scab that prevents water uptake.

If a tree has been without water for more than six or seven hours—for example, if you store it in the garage for a few days before bringing it in the house—Smith recommends making a fresh cut before putting it back in water. One to two hours of exposure is usually fine; six or seven hours is not.

Smith was also eager to bust some persistent Christmas tree care myths. Adding Sprite or aspirin to the water doesn’t help, Smith says, and worrying about water temperature is unnecessary. Warm water quickly cools to room temperature anyway.

“Tap water is fine,” he says. “The tree just needs hydration.”

Placement in the house, on the other hand, is important. A hot air register right next to the tree is “really, really bad,” Smith says, and dries it out regardless of how much water is in the stand. Cooler conditions are best.

He has one longstanding customer who sets up her Fraser fir in a three-season room and keeps it there until April, finally taking it out when the daffodils bloom.

Tree species also plays a major role in how long a tree stays fresh. Norway spruce, while classic in appearance, has inherently poor needle retention and will often drop needles within two weeks, no matter how well it’s cared for. Fir trees perform much better indoors, and among them, the Canaan fir is rapidly gaining in popularity.

Pronounced “ka-NANE,” the Canaan fir is growing rapidly in popularity as a Christmas tree and has an origin story with deep Ohio roots (pun intended).

The tree takes its name from Canaan Valley in West Virginia, where it was first identified, and its development as a Christmas tree accelerated in the 1950s through work at The Ohio State University. That early research helped establish Canaan fir as a reliable option for growers, combining good needle retention, strong branching, and most importantly for growers like Smith, the ability to grow in clay soils.

Many landscape plants are propagated from cuttings to ensure genetic consistency, but Smith explained that Canaan fir trees are grown from seed, and Ohio plays a significant role in that process.

Seed orchards near the OSU Agricultural Research and Development Center in Wooster produce Canaan fir seed from the best of the original “mother trees” bred by Dr. Brown’s team. That seed is sent to Weyerhaeuser, a large forestry company based in Washington state, where it is stored, tested for viability, and grown into seedlings by request from tree farms like Sugargrove.

When Smith receives them, the trees are already two years old and about 18 to 20 inches tall. From there, he grows them on for roughly eight more years before they’re ready to sell.

“That’s a decade of work for one tree,” Smith says.

That timeline helps explain why growing conditions matter so much. National data and maps of Christmas tree production show that Michigan, North Carolina, Oregon and Washington produce 80 to 90 percent of the trees grown in the U.S., with just a few counties accounting for half the total.

According to Smith, trees grown in North Carolina can reach six feet in five years thanks to its ideal climate and sandy soils, half the time it takes in Ohio’s heavier clay soils.

Sugargrove supplements some of its stock from North Carolina, but Ohio-grown trees remain central to the farm. Smith grows Canaan fir, Fraser fir, Norway spruce and white pine.

(However, the early bird gets the tree; Sugargrove began selling trees on Black Friday and sold out by December 14 this year.)

Each species has tradeoffs. Fraser firs are popular for their shape and sweet scent, though Smith notes they’re less tolerant of stress than Canaan firs. White pine can be a good option for lighter decorating styles.

“Think 1950s,” Smith says, “Popcorn strings, tinsel, and lights,” but no heavy ornaments so as to avoid the Charlie Brown tree effect.

Fragrance can also be a factor in tree choice. Smith jokes that old-fashioned blue spruce (which he no longer sells due to diminishing demand) smells like cat urine to him, but he acknowledges some people associate it strongly with Christmas.

Canaan fir has a citrus-like scent, while Fraser fir has a sweeter scent “that smells like Christmas” to him. Pines do not have much fragrance on their own, but combined with garlands and wreaths, a home can still achieve that treasured holiday smell.

Many families debate whether to get a real or artificial tree, but there are differences even among real trees.

Choosing a Christmas tree from an Ohio tree farm supports land that stays in agricultural production rather than being developed. When a tree from a tree farm is cut, it is replaced with a young tree that absorbs carbon as it grows.

Compared with a natural tree shipped from Oregon or the Pacific Northwest, a locally grown tree avoids thousands of miles of transportation and supports regional agriculture. And if a cut tree is composted after the holidays, its carbon is returned to the soil.

Whether a Christmas tree is the only plant you’ll have all year or just another member of your plant family, the care comes down to: choose a species that fits your home and decorating style, keep it away from heat, and above all, keep it watered.

And if you choose a tree from an Ohio tree farm, you continue a cycle that can begin with an Ohio-grown seed and ends, years later, at the center of a family’s Christmas story.

Part 2 of a 3-part series.

South Dakota’s weak open records law gives police agencies full discretion on whether to release footage from body or dashboard cameras, and in most cases, the videos of officer conduct are never shown to the public.

South Dakota News Watch made formal public records requests to obtain video footage of use of deadly force incidents from eight separate law enforcement agencies in November, and all of the requests were quickly denied.

On a few occasions, South Dakota law enforcement agencies have released video footage of their own accord but not necessarily in cases where officer conduct is in question.

The Watertown Police Department released a video on Facebook in early November showing officers responding to a possible break-in with their guns drawn only to find a whitetail buck that had made it into a bedroom.

In 2016, the Rapid City Police Department posted a dash cam video to its public Facebook page showing the chief’s nephew proposing to his girlfriend in a mock traffic stop. “This one is too good not to share,” the Facebook post noted.

The Rapid City Police Department rejected News Watch’s request for videos of a May 30, 2023, incident in which an officer fatally shot 25-year-old Kyle
Whiting, who brandished a fake gun during a foot chase. A bystander inside a nearby home was also shot in the abdomen by the officer and survived. The state ruled the shooting was justified.

Still images tend to clear officers

Some police agencies will occasionally release still images from body or dashboard camera videos, typically when the screenshots show an officer facing a clear threat that appears to justify use of deadly force.

In August, the state released an image from video of a July 5 chase in which a Sioux Falls police officer shot and wounded 24-year-old Deondre Gene Black Hawk in the 100 block of Garfield Avenue.

One still image released to the public shows the gun Black Hawk fired at police. Another image shows Black Hawk pointing the gun toward a pursuing officer prior to the shooting, which was ruled justified by state investigators.

In 2022, the Rapid City Police Department took the unusual step of inviting local media to privately view body camera footage showing the shooting of Barney Leroy Peoples Jr., who was killed after pointing a rifle at officers. The video was not released to the public, and the shooting was ruled justified by the state.

“This was done for public interest and public safety to dispel a false narrative circulating on social media that could have led to civil unrest,” spokesman Brendyn Medina wrote in an email to News Watch.

In a move that appeared to have political overtones, videos were released in 2021 showing former South Dakota Attorney General Jason Ravnsborg being pulled over by officers for suspected traffic violations. The videos and audio showed Ravnsborg informing officers of his status as attorney general during the traffic stops, some of which did not result in tickets.

The videos were released during a period when Ravnsborg was facing possible removal from office for striking and killing a pedestrian in September 2020.

Ravnsborg was eventually impeached, an action supported by then-Gov. Kristi Noem, whose office also made the unprecedented move of releasing videos of Ravnsborg being interviewed by detectives during the investigation into the 2020 fatal accident.

Federal agency released SD shooting video

In general, the federal government provides more public access to police videos than states like South Dakota, and that access was expanded in a May 2022 executive order from President Joe Biden.

That order included a requirement to expedite public release of videos from officers’ body-worn cameras. As a result, in October 2022, the U.S. Department of Interior issued a new policy that required federal officers to wear body cameras and sought to make it easier and faster for the media and public to obtain videos captured by federal authorities.

Due in part to that policy, video of a June 2023 police-involved shooting in South Dakota was released by the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs. In that incident, 39-year-old James Schneider of Watauga fired a weapon and then led authorities on a vehicle chase that ended at the Bullhead Community Center parking lot.

According to the dashboard video, Schneider was waving his arms and holding a handgun in an area where people were present. After he turned to flee into a residential neighborhood, he was shot in the back by an officer. Schneider was found guilty in August of assault and weapons charges after a jury trial and is awaiting sentencing.

In releasing the video, the BIA said it was doing so to be transparent in its operations. To protect the privacy of all involved, faces were blurred in the video.

“The community briefing video is intended to help members of the community gain a better understanding of what occurred,” the BIA said in a release. “We are committed to being transparent with our community.”

Privacy a top concern for agencies

Rapid City police do not routinely release department videos, largely due to privacy concerns of anyone captured in the footage, said Medina, the department spokesman.

“Much of the information collected by (body-worn cameras) is confidential and involves personal information, including that of victims, juveniles, and vulnerable individuals involved in critical and traumatic incidents,” Medina wrote in an email. “It’s important to note that we have had requests from victims and families specifically not to release photos or videos of their encounters with police.  Additionally, juvenile and victim information is protected by state statute.”

Almost all states that allow for public video releases do so with caveats that privacy issues and often concerns over protecting prosecutions are met prior to release.

Rapid City shares the management of its video program with the Pennington County Sheriff’s Office, which recently spent about $48,000 to buy 68 Axon body cameras, said sheriff’s spokeswoman Helene Duhamel.

The Sioux Falls Police Department has an extensive video policy that does not typically allow for public release of videos, said Sgt. Aaron Benson.

“Granting public access to dash and body camera video potentially involves numerous issues relating to the rights of all persons in those videos. These rights include but are not limited to general privacy concerns of victims, suspects, witnesses and others, to statutory and constitutional rights of those same individuals,” Benson wrote in an email. “Additionally, release of video can detrimentally affect ongoing investigations, prosecutions and other legal matters related to those videos.”

McPherson County Sheriff David Ackerman, president of the South Dakota Sheriff’s Association, said body and dash cameras are important tools for police agencies in both urban and rural areas, even though his camera program costs about $60,000 a year, roughly 10% of the overall departmental budget.

“These are very valuable tools, and it’s something that in this day and age, every office and agency needs to have,” Ackerman said. “I’m glad where we are today because they’re for the protection of the public as well as the officers.”

Assistant police chief on body cam: ‘I enjoy wearing it’

Monty Rothenberger, assistant police chief in Yankton, said he supports the use of dash and body cameras as a way to increase accountability for officers and to aid in resolving public complaints.

“I wouldn’t do this job without a body camera, and I enjoy wearing it,” Rothenberger said. “I don’t have anything to hide. And because everything is on video, I feel like Big Brother is watching and I support that.”

The Yankton Police Department bought new cameras last year at a cost of about $80,000, he said.

Rothenberger said that while he is aware of South Dakota public records laws that do not require the department to release videos to the public, he said he personally would support the release of videos in a high-profile or controversial case.

“I’m only speaking for myself, but I would never hide anything like that,” Rothenberger said. “That’s not up to me. … (But) releasing that stuff, it’s good that agencies release things when something has gone wrong and they are being transparent.”

Read part 1 of the 3-part series:

Police videos in SD: Public pays costs but cannot see footage

Advertisement

As more states begin to provide public access to videos captured by law enforcement agencies, South Dakota continues to keep a tight lid on them.

Publishing Friday, Dec. 19, part 3: A 2020 legislative effort to regulate body camera videos never made it to a vote, maintaining South Dakota’s national reputation for law enforcement secrecy

This story was produced by South Dakota News Watch, an independent, nonprofit organization. Read more stories and donate at sdnewswatch.org and sign up for an email to get stories when they’re published. Contact content director Bart Pfankuch at bart.pfankuch@sdnewswatch.org.