Background

Lisa Loken grew up on a farm near Northfield, about 40 miles south of the Twin Cities. She earned a bachelor’s degree in finance and minored in computer science. Originally, she was a programmer working with physical punch cards in Fortran and Cobol! To Lisa, everything is a math problem, able to be worked out given enough thought and time.

Throughout her life, both before and while at Sovran, Lisa credits her entrepreneurial spirit and decision-making ability to her father. He is her most important mentor, helping her throughout her life.

Lisa is extremely focused on taking care of her employees and clients. She believes fastidiously in putting energy into real issues and not sweating the small stuff.

Time At Sovran

Over the years, she’s observed huge changes in technology, from mainframes to networking! She joined Sovran in 1990, became a minority owner in 1998 and became the majority owner in 2003. One thing she says hasn’t changed is the need for customer service.

“Take care of your employees, partners and customers,” Lisa said.

She’s found that tomorrow isn’t guaranteed, and making the best of today requires prioritization and caring for what really makes Sovran tick - people.

Sovran 2027

In the next decade, Lisa sees Sovran helping small businesses use technology through managed services – meaning, businesses will pay a monthly or per-use fee, but the hardware comes with it.

She wants to see Sovran continue to make an impact with small businesses, not with big Fortune 500 players.

“Relationships are so important, and I want to see us continue to value the personal relationships we can have with companies which have 200 or fewer users,” Lisa said.