News
DeFoe takes over as EDC director
Scott Wagar
01/07/2014
Deana DeFoe has accepted the position of director for the Bottineau County Economic Development Corporation. She replaces Diane Olson who retired from her position at the end of December.
DeFoe was born and raised in Lawton, Okla., and is a graduate of Eisenhower High School in Lawton.
From high school, she attended Cameron University in Lawton before she entered into the military where she served in the U.S. Army as a linguist for four years overseas in Europe.
After DeFoe left the army, she and her husband, Mike, who was also a linguist in the U.S. Army, moved back to Mike’s home state of North Dakota.
In North Dakota, DeFoe earned degrees in Spanish and education with a minor in German at Dickinson State University.
She is currently working toward her Master’s degree in structural design and technology at the University of North Dakota.
After DeFoe graduated from Dickinson State University, she was employed as a Spanish and German teacher for a number of years before going on to work as an executive director, development director and consultant in the non-profit sector.
She and her husband moved to Bottineau two years ago when Mike accepted a position with St. Andrew’s Health Center as the chief financial officer.
DeFoe has continued to work as a consultant the past two years until she accepted her position at the EDC.
As the new director for the EDC, DeFoe said that she is pleased to have this position in the community.
“I am very excited, very grateful and very honored to be chosen for this position. I am very passionate about it because my background in consulting is in strategic planning and fund development. So, I have a long history with fundraising and those types of things,” DeFoe said. “I have a real passion for community development. My thing is kind of bringing the community together because you can’t build anything with one person or one organization, and I kind of view the EDC as a background organization for helping launch and spearhead projects.”
DeFoe’s first goal of the first quarter of the 2014 year is to get Bottineau’s newest day care, the Bottineau Community Children’s Academy, in operation to assist those who are desperately in need of day care.
DeFoe and her husband, have three children, which include twin boys in the fourth grade and a 20 year daughter who is a second year student at Dakota College at Bottineau.
In the family’s spare time they enjoy outdoor recreation like boating, fishing and hunting. The DeFoes also enjoy the game of hockey and the two boys are members of the Bottineau Blue Line Club.