•Dan Swenson, MBA, has been selected as administrator of Long Prairie Memorial Hospital and Home.
He has held positions at Appleton Area Health Services in Appleton, and Cooperstown Medical Center in Cooperstown, North Dakota. Swenson has experience in overall leadership, strategic planning, operations, medical staff development and recruitment. He will begin his duties March 2 and will relocate to Long Prairie.
Swenson received his bachelor’s degree in health care administration from the University of Minnesota Crookston and a master’s degree in business administration from the University of Mary in Bismarck, N.D.
•Edina Realty reports that the following realtors from the Alexandria office have been named members of Edina Realty’s President’s or Leadership Circles:
Lauri Nellermoe and Terri Bush – President’s Circle; Wendie VanKirk and Sue Palmquist – Leadership Circle.
Members of Edina Realty’s circles are those who achieved an outstanding level of sales performance and customer service in 2008.
“Becoming a President’s and Leadership Circle member takes exceptional market knowledge, expertise, negotiation skills and a high level of customer service,” said Bob Peltier, Edina Realty president and CEO.
•Alexandria Police Captain Scott Kent graduated from the Minnesota Chiefs of Police Association’s Academy for Chief Law Enforcement Officers (CLEO) and Command Academy at Camp Ripley.
The four-day, state association course of instruction is designed to update and refresh law enforcement executives with their leadership responsibilities and resources in their profession. The purpose of the academy is to help new and veteran police department face challenges behind the desk and on the street.
The CLEO Academy is an intensive training session taught by Minnesota-grown and seasoned police chiefs and legal staff. In addition, the academy covers topics such as ethics, community initiative planning, budgeting, complaint handling, and state and federal mandates.
Chief Mona Dohman of Maple Grove and vice president of the Minnesota Chiefs of Police Association said that even with the 2009 state budget shortfall in local government aid, public safety and police departments must preserve and budget for the events in their communities that allow their police forces to connect with citizens.
More information about the association is available at www.mnchiefs.org.
•Fritz Bukowski, director of recreation for Lakes Area Recreation and Minnesota Senior Games director, attended the annual meeting of the National Senior Games Association (NSGA) held in New Orleans in January.
While attending the conference, Bukowski was nominated and elected to be on the Board of Directors for the NSGA. The NSGA is a non-profit member of the United States Olympic Committee dedicated to motivating senior men and women to lead a healthy lifestyle through the senior games movement.
The NSGA governs the Summer National Senior Games, the largest multi-sport event in the world for seniors. This year’s National Games will be held in August at Palo Alto, California. on the Stanford University Campus. More than 12,000 athletes from 50 different states will compete in 20 different sports.
Lakes Area Recreation hosted the Minnesota Senior Games last year as the qualifying site for the 2009 NSGA. More than 190 Minnesota athletes qualified for the national games in Palo Alto.
Alexandria will host the Minnesota Senior Games July 20-24 in 2009 and in 2010, which will be the national qualifying year for the NSGA scheduled for Houston in 2011.
•Eliza Anderson will soon join the team of teachers at Carlson Music.
She is a graduate from the Brandon area where she took lessons from Annette Helder for 11 years and taught music for five years to beginner students.
Anderson is a graduate from Alexandria Technical College. She also went to school at Northwestern College where she took voice lessons and was a member of their women’s chorale choir.
She will be offering piano, flute and voice lessons for beginning students.
•Brent Boraas, CFP, ChFC, FIC, of Alexandria, a financial consultant for the northwestern Minnesota and eastern North Dakota regional financial office of Thrivent Financial for Lutherans, has been named the region’s top investment producer for 2008.
Boraas was first in total sales out of the 87 financial representatives associated with the northwestern Minnesota and eastern North Dakota region. He serves Lutherans and their family members in Alexandria and the surrounding communities.
Boraas has worked for Thrivent Financial for Lutherans or its predecessors since 1996.
•Charles Francis has joined the Design Tree Engineering team in Alexandria as a project engineer. He graduated from the University of North Dakota – Grand Forks with a degree in mechanical engineering and has previous experience as an application engineer at the Trane and McQuay companies.
His responsibilities now entail design of plumbing and mechanical systems for all types of occupancies from light commercial to industrial buildings and facilities.
Francis was born in Malaysia and arrived in the United States in 1984. He is married and lives in Brandon, where he and his wife, Kim, raise elk and Jacob sheep.