Laketown Electric Grew From 12 Employees to $60 Million. Its CEO Just Won an Award.

Matt Bergmann took over a 12-person electrical contractor and turned it into a company with more than 160 employees and over $60 million in annual sales. On Wednesday, Nov. 4, he will receive the 2026 Entrepreneur of the Year Award from the Donald McNeely Center for Entrepreneurship at the College of Saint Benedict and Saint John's University.

He's not alone. The McNeely Center named three winners this year: Bergmann '04, who leads Laketown Electric Corporation; Wendy Kampa Hinnenkamp '97, co-founder of the wellness food brand Clo Cloud Foods; and Beth Lenhardt Finch '85, founder of the nonprofit CharterSource, who earned the Social Entrepreneur of the Year honor.

All three will be recognized at the annual award ceremony from 5 to 8 p.m. Wednesday at the Metropolitan Ballroom and Clubroom in Golden Valley. Tickets cost $35 to $50, and registration remains open.

What does the award recognize?

The awards, presented annually since 2011, honor a Johnnie and a Bennie who best exemplify entrepreneurship by starting and successfully managing businesses while practicing Benedictine values in the workplace and in their lives. The social category covers ventures that enrich humanity or address a social issue.

"It's always an amazing event," said Shannon M.B. Goergen, director of the McNeely Center and a visiting assistant professor of entrepreneurship at CSB and SJU. "It's an opportunity for us to honor alums who launch and lead ventures of various sizes that create real and lasting value."

A family business rebuilt after loss

Laketown Electric was founded in 1975 by Bergmann's parents, David and Christine. His father paid his way through trade school after being raised by neighbors following his own parents' deaths, and built a career out of tinkering with farm equipment and electrical components.

Bergmann joined the family business in 2012, at the tail-end of the recession, after starting his career elsewhere following his SJU degree in management and communication. His father died later that year at 60, leaving Matt to lead the company while grieving. "The first step was helping him save the business," Bergmann said. "But by 2013, we started to right the ship and we've kept growing from there."

He ran the business with his brother before becoming sole owner in 2020. Today Laketown Electric, one of Minnesota's leading commercial and industrial electrical contractors, operates offices in Waconia and Mankato and serves clients in Minnesota, the Dakotas and Iowa.

His hiring record stands out: 90 percent year-over-year employee retention and over 1,400 applicants last year alone. "We've been able to make Laketown a place people want to work," Bergmann said.

A food brand born from allergies

Hinnenkamp and her husband Augie founded Clo Cloud Foods after their middle daughter Chloe was diagnosed with severe food allergies at six months old. "We'd spend hours going to grocery stores, looking at labels and ingredients to be safe about what we could buy," Wendy said in a 2025 interview.

The company's plant-based pizzas and flatbreads are now sold at select locations of Target, Cub, Coborn's, Lunds and Byerlys, Sprouts Farmers Market and other retailers, plus Minneapolis co-ops Wedge Lynden Hills and Wedge Lyndale.

"We created this because we wanted to help other people who were dealing with severe food allergies, or had dietary restrictions of any kind," she said.

Education without zip-code limits

Finch, a 1985 CSB graduate with more than 25 years in education, founded CharterSource in 2016 to handle the business side of charter schools. "Our job is to make it easier for the real heroes, the leaders and teachers, so they can focus on teaching and learning," she said.

She also co-founded Lake Country Academy, a pre-K through eighth-grade public charter school in Wisconsin, and served on the founding board of Great MN Schools. "No one should have to settle for a lesser education because of their zip code," Finch said.

Of the award, she said: "It came as a complete surprise to me. There are so many talented Bennies and Johnnies out there doing amazing work with incredible organizations."

Wednesday's ceremony, which starts with a social hour at 5 p.m. and an awards presentation at 6:15, doubles as a networking event for the schools' entrepreneurial community — a useful room for any founder with Bennie or Johnnie ties.