Nate Jorgensen\u2019s first week at the helm of wood products building materials company Boise Cascade was one to remember.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A structural engineer, he had been with the company since 2015; three promotions later, he was the company\u2019s chief executive. That was March 2020, when swaths of society shut down as COVID-19 exploded around the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThere wasn\u2019t a script out there that said, \u2018Here\u2019s what you do when you have a global pandemic,\u2019\u201d Jorgensen says. \u201cWe had to rely on our values as an organization to make sure we were really clear on what our priorities were\u2014which was first and foremost making sure of the health of our associates each and every day. And then business continuity, to make sure our company continued to exist in an environment where we really didn\u2019t know what was going to happen.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Four years later, Boise Cascade continues to thrive under Jorgensen\u2019s leadership. The Fortune 500 company has approximately 7,400 employees and logged $6.3 billion in sales in 2023.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Jorgensen has always looked for opportunities to expand and diversify his skillset. From 1987 to 2015, he worked with Weyerhaeuser, beginning as a structural engineer in the Trus Joist unit, working with engineered wood products. Ultimately, he rose to vice president of North American residential business.<\/p>\n\n\n\n At Weyerhaeuser, Jorgensen transitioned into sales after a few years of working in engineering. In the late 1990s, he joined a team that spent three years preparing the company\u2019s backend computer system for the new millennium to avoid the Y2K bug.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Jorgensen credits his successes in his various roles to lessons learned in UW-Madison\u2019s engineering classes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cBeyond the technical engineering skills, my engineering classes taught me things like collaboration and gave me confidence in what I was doing and in seeing what was possible to do,\u201d he says. \u201cEngineering requires a lot of attention to detail and planning, and that\u2019s a skill that\u2019s served me not only in the classroom but throughout my career.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Jorgensen is a member of the Board of Directors for the American Wood Council and a board member for Idaho Power and IDACORP. Idaho Business Review <\/em>named him a CEO of Influence in 2023.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A lot of my career has been tied to construction and housing. Looking back on what I\u2019ve done, the companies I\u2019ve been involved with have really been a part of providing housing for our communities. As I think about what\u2019s important in our nation, in our communities and to our families, one of the key answers is homes. It\u2019s a privilege to work with companies that have been and will continue to be a part answering that need.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For me, the work ethic and grit you had to bring to it every day. There was a lot of great talent in those classrooms that you worked with but also had to kind of compete with. So that resilience and grit that I needed was a part of my education and it still helps me today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Winter or summer in Madison?<\/strong> Fun on the Terrace or fun on Lake Mendota?<\/strong> Sweet Caroline or Jump Around?<\/strong> BSCEE \u201987 (Tuck School of Business Executive Education Program \u201897, Dartmouth)Chief Executive Officer, Boise Cascade A structural engineer, executive and leader in manufacturing and distributing sustainable wood-based construction products and…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":48,"featured_media":102891,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_tec_requires_first_save":true,"_mbp_gutenberg_autopost":false,"_EventAllDay":false,"_EventTimezone":"","_EventStartDate":"","_EventEndDate":"","_EventStartDateUTC":"","_EventEndDateUTC":"","_EventShowMap":false,"_EventShowMapLink":false,"_EventURL":"","_EventCost":"","_EventCostDescription":"","_EventCurrencySymbol":"","_EventCurrencyCode":"","_EventCurrencyPosition":"","_EventDateTimeSeparator":"","_EventTimeRangeSeparator":"","_EventOrganizerID":[],"_EventVenueID":[],"_OrganizerEmail":"","_OrganizerPhone":"","_OrganizerWebsite":"","_VenueAddress":"","_VenueCity":"","_VenueCountry":"","_VenueProvince":"","_VenueState":"","_VenueZip":"","_VenuePhone":"","_VenueURL":"","_VenueStateProvince":"","_VenueLat":"","_VenueLng":"","_VenueShowMap":false,"_VenueShowMapLink":false,"_tribe_blocks_recurrence_rules":"","_tribe_blocks_recurrence_description":"","_tribe_blocks_recurrence_exclusions":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2644],"tags":[],"department":[2387],"class_list":["post-102711","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-alumni","department-civil-environmental-engineering"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/engineering.wisc.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102711","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/engineering.wisc.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/engineering.wisc.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/engineering.wisc.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/48"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/engineering.wisc.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=102711"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/engineering.wisc.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102711\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":102894,"href":"https:\/\/engineering.wisc.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102711\/revisions\/102894"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/engineering.wisc.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/102891"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/engineering.wisc.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=102711"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/engineering.wisc.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=102711"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/engineering.wisc.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=102711"},{"taxonomy":"department","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/engineering.wisc.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/department?post=102711"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Nate](\"https:\/\/engineering.wisc.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/jorgenson-1024x1024.avif\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\nWhat do you enjoy about your career?<\/h5>\n\n\n\n
How did your engineering education enable your success?<\/h5>\n\n\n\n
Which do you prefer?<\/h5>\n\n\n\n
Summer in Madison is spectacular.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Whenever we go back to visit Madison, there are a lot of places we try to get to, but we\u2019ve definitely got to get to the Terrace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Jump Around<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"