The riots that followed the Minneapolis police killing of George Floyd in 2020 left several commercial corridors in ruins.

Lake Street and West Broadway in Minneapolis as well as University Avenue in St. Paul bore the scars of the violence. Many of the small businesses that were burned, badly damaged, and/or looted were owned by people of color. 

David Mortenson, chairman of family-owned Mortenson construction company in Golden Valley, understood the magnitude of the personal trauma and business destruction that had spread across urban neighborhoods.

A Minneapolis resident, Mortenson didn’t want to sit idly by and watch these devastated business districts languish. Without quick action, he feared that large and small businesses would leave the stricken areas.

“I called the CEO of Target, the CEO of Cub Foods, the CEO of U.S. Bank,” Mortenson said in a recent interview in his headquarters office bordering Olson Memorial Highway. He asked about their plans, and they said they would rebuild in the neighborhoods.

“No. 1, make sure the anchors aren’t going anywhere,” he says. “No. 2 was the employee base.” He enlisted financial support from other large companies and deployed Mortenson staff to identify whether small businesses could reopen if they got replacement windows, doors, awnings, and security systems. “Make it feel like it’s a functioning economic corridor,” he says.

Former Minneapolis mayor R.T. Rybak says Mortenson’s commitment to rebuilding the commercial districts included producing detailed maps and estimates of the damage. “There was more than $200 million in uninsured damage,” says Rybak, now president and CEO of the Minneapolis Foundation. “David came to the Minneapolis Foundation to create a fund to raise private dollars,” he says. “The Restore-Rebuild-Reimagine Fund brought in $15 million.”

Rybak says the damage estimates that Mortenson employees created were used to secure substantial funds from the Minnesota Legislature for restoration.

“I’ve been around the civic world in Minneapolis-St. Paul for many decades,” Rybak says. “I honestly cannot think of an example where one [top executive] and one company did as much for the community at such a crucial time.”

Mortenson’s dedication to rebuilding efforts is viewed as a model for what business and other community leaders would like public company CEOs to do to strengthen the quality of life in the Twin Cities. 

But some veteran business leaders say some corporate CEOs are missing in action, not stepping up to help revitalize downtown Minneapolis and tackle a variety of social and economic problems on the local level.

Twin Cities Business interviewed several top business and community leaders to hear their assessments of the state of CEO civic involvement, understand the roots of Minnesota’s public-private partnerships, identify obstacles to civic engagement, and learn how corporate responsibility in the Twin Cities is evolving.

CEO disengagement at the local level

“There’s been a precipitous decline in involvement by the leadership of our major companies,” says Russ Nelson, retired president/principal of NTH Inc., a real estate firm based in downtown Minneapolis. Not all corporations and their CEOs have retrenched in their civic engagement, but many of them have, he says.

“COVID had a major impact,” Nelson says. “I get it. That slowed the train down tremendously, but that excuse is [wearing] thin now.” Nelson has been involved in numerous civic activities, including chairing the Minneapolis Downtown Council and serving on the boards of Regions Hospital and the Minneapolis Foundation.

In the past, Nelson says, CEOs often worked together to take action on important community needs and opportunities, including securing support for U.S. Bank Stadium, winning a Super Bowl site selection for Minneapolis, and creating Greater MSP, which supports economic development.

Former CEOs whom he cites as positively engaged in civic matters are Richard Davis, U.S. Bank; Doug Baker, Ecolab; Ken Powell, General Mills; Mary Brainerd, HealthPartners; Marilyn Carlson Nelson, Carlson; and Ben Fowke, Xcel Energy.

While Nelson acknowledges that some current CEOs are involved in civic affairs work, he argues that several appear wary of doing or saying something controversial instead of doing the right thing. 

Pat Ryan, chairman of Minneapolis-based Ryan Cos., has strong opinions about civic engagement and talks with other leaders about this issue. About a decade ago, he says, he began to see some public company CEOs start to pull away from community work and projects.

“The complexities of working within a public [company environment] have increased dramatically,” Ryan says. “Because of that, there is less time allowed for high-profile community work.”

Corporate governance becomes a constraining factor when public company board members want to avoid controversies, he says. Because some corporate stakeholders—investors, clients, consumers—have different viewpoints and interests, Ryan says CEOs may shy away from certain social or economic issues to avoid alienating a major constituency.

A left-wing Minneapolis City Council

Ryan emphasizes that the business community has a track record of working with the city of Minneapolis on public-private partnerships that benefit the community.

In 2015, about $15 million was raised for The Commons downtown park through a partnership between the city and downtown businesses. “There was a tremendous amount of private involvement to create The Commons, a destination in what used to be a sea of asphalt around the old Star Tribune building,” Ryan says.

He points to former Target CEO Bob Ulrich, in an earlier era, taking the lead in making downtown Minneapolis safer. Target had sophisticated security camera systems, and Ulrich thought the cameras would enhance policing in Minneapolis. “He took their model and convinced the city to utilize that on a community basis,” Ryan says. “There was no fanfare, no public acknowledgement. He didn’t want any.”

That type of cooperation is hard to find today, Ryan says. He’s exceedingly frustrated that a major bloc of the Minneapolis City Council “views business as its enemy.” He notes that several members of the council were endorsed by the Twin Cities Democratic Socialists of America, and he says their policy positions demonstrate a “distaste for business.”

Doug Baker, former CEO of St. Paul-based Ecolab, has been engaged in civic projects across the Twin Cities and in Minnesota. He shares Ryan’s concerns. Because of the political composition of the City Council, Baker says, “Minneapolis is a very difficult place to navigate right now.” 

He says it’s problematic that some local elected officials don’t recognize the importance that businesses play in creating a vibrant community, where they provide jobs, pay property taxes, and sell goods and services. “When businesses take their communities for granted, it’s not healthy,” Baker says. “When communities take their businesses for granted, it’s not healthy.”

Ryan, who also has been dismayed by the St. Paul City Council’s support for rent control, wants business and city leaders to coalesce around solutions that make economic sense and benefit the Twin Cities long term. 

“I am hopeful that we can get back on a plane where there is a symbiotic relationship between the business community and the community at large,” Ryan says. 

Expectations of corporate responsibility

Bill George, now in his 80s, came to the Twin Cities as a young business executive and went on to lead Medtronic as its CEO. Now he’s an executive fellow at Harvard Business School.

“The Dayton family did so much to build this community,” George says, citing brothers Bruce and Ken Dayton, who served as CEOs of Dayton Hudson Corp., which is now Target Corp.

The Daytons and other prominent business families of their generation set a standard for civic engagement. When new CEOs arrived in the Twin Cities, they would ask them “what they wanted to get involved in and tell them they had an obligation to get involved,” George says.

As time went on, he says, “we passed that [civic ethos] on to the next generation.” George points to corporate CEOs supporting the arts, strong school systems, a healthy environment, and major nonprofit organizations.

He also says that many CEOs viewed downtown Minneapolis as an economic engine. “I was on the board when Bob [Ulrich, then CEO] led the building of the new Target headquarters in downtown Minneapolis,” George says.

He acknowledges that public company CEOs as well as CEOs of large privately held companies are operating in a new environment, which includes sharp political divisions on the national and state levels, instant and negative posts on social media, and reduced in-person contact because of hybrid work schedules.

“We have very good [CEO] leaders, but they haven’t stepped up as much into a community role,” George says.

“I am concerned overall, and I’d like to see more engagement,” he says. “We used to have two bank CEOs that were very, very engaged in the community, and we don’t see that now.” In addition, he says, “we’re counting on Target to do more because they’ve been such a leader for 50 years or more.”

In 2025, George maintains, it is paramount for business CEOs to be involved in initiatives to make local communities better places to live and work. “In this era of political volatility and chaos, we need a strong business community to be the moderating force between the extremes of the Minneapolis City Council on one end and wherever the new administration federally will go on the other end,” George says.

Becoming civic-minded CEOs

At the University of Minnesota’s Carlson School of Management, professor Myles Shaver teaches future corporate leaders and observes the behavior of Twin Cities-based CEOs.

He defines a civic-minded CEO as “a CEO that has a broad enough vision that they understand the well-being of their community affects their company, and that their company affects the well-being of the community.”

For five years, he co-taught a class on corporate responsibility with Marilyn Carlson Nelson, who took a leadership role in the hospitality industry to fight sex trafficking and helped land two Super Bowls for the Twin Cities.

Carlson Nelson, U.S. Bank’s Davis, and Ecolab’s Baker are often mentioned as great examples of CEOs who embraced civic engagement and made positive contributions on numerous issues.

Baker, who’s been heavily involved in supporting early education for children, eschews thinking of himself in a class apart from today’s CEOs.

“I don’t really subscribe to the theory that the new generation [of CEOs] isn’t doing what it’s supposed to do,” Baker says. “How the new generation is being measured right now is a little unfair, given COVID.”

Baker, whose 16-year run as Ecolab CEO was much longer than that of most public company CEOs, says he wasn’t involved in multiple civic projects at the outset. “I just tried to learn the [CEO] job and stay in the job,” he says. Baker notes that new CEOs also focus on the challenges of leading big companies before they’re able to integrate civic work into their schedules.

But after Baker hit his stride as a CEO, he got involved in several community projects. One of them was co-chairing the $40 million fundraising campaign for a two-building homeless shelter and social service facility at the Dorothy Day Center in downtown St. Paul.

“Dorothy Day was down the street,” Baker says. “I drove by the old one every night when I went home [after work]. You’d be at a stoplight looking at people filing around the building because it was too small to house them.”

He remembers thinking, “How did I end up in the car and they ended up there?” Recognizing that he grew up in a secure environment that set him on a path to financial and business success, Baker chose to help the people served by the Dorothy Day Center, which he describes as a neighbor to Ecolab’s headquarters.

Several of today’s CEOs have had to deal with a four-year fallout from COVID, Baker says, because disrupted supply chains and inflation followed the spread of the disease.

Baker is excited that his CEO successor, Christophe Beck, is engaged in major issues on the global and local levels. “Christophe is quite involved in [the revitalization of] downtown St. Paul and chairing Greater MSP, which I love and think has been a great organization.”

Itasca Project, Greater MSP

St. Paul-based Greater MSP was created in 2011 to support economic development in the Twin Cities metro area. It was an initiative of the Itasca Project, which has defined itself as “an employer-led civic alliance focused on building a thriving economy and expanding prosperity for all.”

Lynn Casey, retired chair of the Padilla public relations firm, has been active in the Itasca Project for most of its 20-year history. She currently serves on Itasca’s executive leadership council. Under the Itasca Project, CEOs have taken part in study panels and weighed in with recommendations on issues that include educational achievement, housing affordability, and regional competitiveness.

Itasca, now co-located with Greater MSP, has given Casey extensive exposure to how CEOs in the Twin Cities engage with community challenges and projects.

“Anyone who has pride in this region wants it to be perfect, and that means that every large-company CEO is going to be involved in multiple initiatives,” Casey says. “I don’t believe that that is possible today with the press of business.”

But Casey says that doesn’t mean that civic engagement within a given corporation needs to diminish, because other corporate executives can supplement the involvement of the CEO. “I would not characterize it as a decline,” she says. “It is an evolution driven by the complexity and intensity of the corporate environment.”

Big-company CEOs may no longer sit on boards of many Twin Cities nonprofits, she says. But they’ve empowered other senior leaders within their corporations to assume some of the civic affairs work.

Casey and Tim Welsh, former U.S. Bank executive, say many CEOs are still able to find time for civic pursuits by engaging in coalition work through Greater MSP.

Welsh spotlighted the 2023 formation of a Minnesota sustainable aviation fuel hub, which he says wouldn’t have happened without the direct involvement of the CEOs of Xcel Energy, Ecolab, and Atlanta-based Delta Air Lines. “The World Economic Forum at Davos highlighted the Minnesota SAF hub as one of the world’s most promising solutions for decarbonizing air travel,” Welsh says.

He also cited MBOLD, which is a collaborative effort of businesses, researchers, and nonprofits that aims to find solutions to global challenges facing the food and agriculture sectors. With the concentration of agriculture and food companies in Minnesota, he says that MBOLD is primed to make important discoveries through cooperative efforts. MBOLD’s executive council includes the CEOs of General Mills and Schwan’s, a Cargill group president, and Target’s food and beverage president.

Welsh also lauds Medtronic CEO Geoff Martha, who leads a MedTech 3.0 coalition in Minnesota. One of its big questions, Welsh says, is: How do we bring the payers, providers, and medtech together to continue to advance innovation?

He expects these three coalitions to shape Minnesota’s future economy. “These are groups of CEOs weighing in on really significant issues,” Welsh says. He anticipates the collaborations will result in new jobs and “help keep this community vibrant for decades.”

Competing for time with national, global issues

Dorothy Bridges has seen shifts in CEO civic engagement through three prominent roles she’s held since 1999—president and CEO of Franklin National Bank of Minneapolis, senior vice president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, and her current role as president and CEO of the Metropolitan Economic Development Association (MEDA).

In previous decades, she says, CEOs saw it as their duty and responsibility to be civically engaged in the local community. “They prided themselves on being good stewards for their corporations in the community,” Bridges says. 

She cited the work of former Honeywell CEO Michael Bonsignore. “He noticed that there was just massive disrepair and disinvestment in the South Minneapolis Phillips neighborhood [where Honeywell had its headquarters], and he made it his personal commitment to really turn things around,” Bridges says, including working with partners to construct affordable homes.

As Twin Cities-based corporations have grown, Bridges says, many CEOs have less time for local, community-based causes because they are dealing with national and international issues. “They began to see their role on a more global scale and not necessarily so tied into where their backyard was located,” Bridges says.

Former Medtronic CEO George characterizes Beth Ford, CEO of Land O’Lakes, as a “fantastic leader” who has spent considerable time on a national level advocating for farmers and rural America. She built a coalition that was key to securing $65 billion in federal funding in 2021 to extend broadband to underserved areas in the U.S.

In January, the national Business Roundtable announced that Ford would chair its Immigration Committee, at a time when immigration is a priority issue for the Trump administration. Ford succeeds Apple CEO Tim Cook. 

Ford lives in the Twin Cities on a full-time basis. After becoming CEO in 2018, Ford juggled her Land O’Lakes job and work on national initiatives with raising teenage children who attended school locally. 

In contrast, a reality that bothers George and some other longtime business leaders is that some of the largest corporations currently have CEOs who live in the Twin Cities on a part-time basis, which limits their time to engage in civic affairs.

“An awful lot gets done when people bump into each other,” Rybak says, so he thinks the CEOs who don’t primarily live in the Twin Cities are missing opportunities to be exposed to issues and civic endeavors with other business leaders.

Building a bigger civic table

Charlie Weaver worked with corporate CEOs for 20 years in his role as executive director of the Minnesota Business Partnership. He retired in 2023.

While many senior executives are engaged in civic affairs in the Twin Cities, Weaver stresses that it’s critical to preserve the direct involvement of CEOs.

“The most important asset that these individuals have provided over the years is their leadership, their willingness to tackle tough issues, their vision, their commitment, their intolerance for things to move slowly,” Weaver says. “They are impatient, tactical, strategic, and metric-based.”

Casey wants to ensure that CEOs are engaged in civic affairs, but she argues that it’s also important that a range of people see themselves as civic leaders, including those in their 30s and 40s.

On Oct. 23, the Itasca Project celebrated its 20th anniversary with an event at the Union Depot in St. Paul called “Catalyzing Civic Leadership.” Casey says established and emerging leaders were invited, and more than 300 people showed up.

Organizers also brought Davis, U.S. Bank’s CEO from late 2006 to mid-2017, back to Minnesota to close out the program. “He wanted to make sure that people in the audience understood, from a former business leader in this community, how important and special it is to become civically engaged,” Casey says.

Any individual can “play a role in making the community better,” Rybak says. He praises the Itasca Project’s work. “It brought CEOs to the table, but also brought university presidents, the mayors, and community members to the table,” he says. Going forward, he says, even more people need to be welcomed to the civic affairs table.

“The narrative that I grew up with was: ‘Don’t worry about what happens, because there are five great civic leaders who are going to swoop in and save the day.’ Frankly, on a lot of levels, they did. But that’s not the way to run a multidimensional community. It requires much broader participation,” Rybak says.

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