Episode 4: Community Over Competition

Megan Militello was 17 years old, controlling air traffic in an Iraq war zone out of an airfield the size of Phoenix Sky Harbor. Today she's building something completely different, and arguably just as ambitious.Megan is the executive director of the Alaska Manufacturing Association, which she co-founded in March 2025 to fill a gap nobody else was filling: a real community for the people actually making things in Alaska. At her last networking event in Palmer, a founder still in the prototype phase sat across from the owner of a 70-year-old Fairbanks manufacturing company, swapping notes. That's not an accident. That's the whole point.In this episode, Megan tells Shelly how she went from the Army to the FAA to her dad's basement in Alaska to launching a granola company to building a statewide manufacturing community. She shares her "spinning plates" framework for not losing your mind, why community over competition is a survival strategy in Alaska, and one of the best lines we've had on the show yet: closed mouths don't get fed. 🎙️