Laurel Vicklund was the original thought-partner. During Peregrine’s initial 15 years, Laurel balanced her role as an environmental engineer and scientist with her contributions to Peregrine. Evenings and weekends were dedicated to brainstorming sessions with Peregrine’s founder and her husband, Dr. Olin Oedekoven. They tackled ideas, challenges, and potential solutions.
In early 2020, Laurel had the opportunity to join Peregrine full-time to expand the company’s reach and further its mission. As President and Cofounder, Laurel is counted on to develop stakeholder relationships, work with partners across the globe, strategic planning, contribute to innovation and service development, and support market expansion.
Laurel’s team considers her a Renaissance woman due to her talents and skills. Her leadership approach is characterized by a willingness to engage directly in every aspect of the company’s operations, demonstrating the power of leading by example. Laurel’s leadership is deeply rooted in her values, reflecting a commitment to collaboration, innovation, and a genuine dedication to the well-being and development of her team and the broader community Peregrine serves. Finally, Laurel is essential in fostering international and cross-cultural relationships (she speaks French and is working on proficiency in several other languages).
In addition, Laurel serves the important role of President of Peregrine Global Foundation, our charitable arm, which solicits and uses donations to help fund educational opportunities worldwide. She identifies opportunities to use these funds to remove barriers that prevent students from attending school and getting an education. She works hand in hand in partnership with Southern New Hampshire University’s Global Education Movement in Africa, promoting educational opportunities in refugee camps.
Laurel has nearly 40 years of professional experience — primarily in the energy sector — most recently serving as Senior Environmental Scientist and Environmental Engineer in the Powder River Basin of Wyoming. She has demonstrated a history of service and “giving back” and is heavily involved in various ecological causes. She leads professional affiliations dedicated to habitat development for sage grouse, mining reclamation, and more. She has served as President of the American Society of Mining and Reclamation (ASMR) and has spent more than three decades committed to related causes. Laurel was named Wyoming Business Report: Woman of Influence in the Energy Sector in 2015 and received the Reclamationist of the Year from ASMR in 2002. She has also been a project manager for several environmental and archaeological projects that received state and national reclamation awards. In addition, she has authored or co-authored multiple publications in those areas and has presented on these and other topics worldwide, including in Mongolia, Kazakhstan, and Australia. Laurel cites Theodore Roosevelt’s “Man in the Arena” as an inspiration to constantly try rather than sit idle.
“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”
