Bill Patrie, Annual Meeting Guest Speaker

Retired Cooperative and Economic Development Director Bill Patrie has worked on numerous projects in North Dakota since 1975 including the development of ProGold LLC and Golden Growers Cooperative.

Patrie provided technical assistance and grantsmanship for the establishment of the Noodles by Leonardo pasta plant in Cando, North Dakota, while serving as the executive director of North Central Planning Council in Devils Lake, North Dakota. He served as the director of the Economic Development Commission for the State of North Dakota during the George Sinner administration and as the director of rural development for the North Dakota Association of Rural Electric Cooperatives.

While with the RECs, Patrie led a number of new value added cooperatives which became one of the Associated Press's stories of the year in 1995. Patrie has worked with potatoes, durum wheat, corn, bison, beef, dairy, chickens, turkeys, nitrogen fertilizer, and gyno typing for lactobacillus in ethanol plants. He was a founding member of Dakotas America, an LLC that has placed more than $300 million in new market tax credits in rural areas in the United States. He also helped create an intellectual property company controlled by commodity organizations who funded the initial research.

Bill and his wife Marcia live North of Bismarck in the Missouri River valley. They have three adult children and three grandchildren.