Mark E. Davis

Mark Davis, the oldest of five children, four boys and a girl, was born in 1941 in Frost, Minnesota. Davis's father, Stanley, who had not been able to afford to go to college, found steady employment working in the region's creameries, first as a laborer and later as a butter maker. Davis's mother, Gloria, who married and gave birth to her first son at the age of 18, worked as a telephone operator and as a waitress at the local hotel. One year after his birth, a butter-making job lured the family to Lamesa, Texas, where Davis's brother Tom was born.

In 1943, the Davis family returned to their father's hometown of Arlington, Minnesota, where Davis's father took a butter-making job. Soon after, he got the chance to buy the St. Peter Creamery there. The mother and her two sisters, all factory seamstresses, pooled $1,500 to lend Stanley Davis the down payment for the deed.

The St. Peter Creamery was a small enterprise, and Davis's father often put in 18-hour days. In the beginning, the family could afford to live only in a rustic, unheated resort cabin. One cold November night, Davis's grandparents, who had helped raise him, arrived and took the family back to the grandparents' small house until winter ended.

In the spring, Davis's family moved to an apartment above the local laundromat, but that was not the last relocation. In seven months, they moved six times, each time trying to better their living situation. Following the passing of Davis's grandmother in 1946, Davis's father was able to buy her house, giving his family its first real home. Moreover, he repaired and remodeled the old house in his minimal after-work hours.

"Growing up in the quaint river town of St. Peter gave me an idyllic childhood," recalls Davis. "I knew all the kids in my neighborhood. We played sports together and spent time at the river, even when we were told not to go there. It was a good place to grow up, and I thoroughly enjoyed it."

Hard work was the first and primary value Davis learned from his parents. His mother often told her sons that their father needed their full support in his efforts to make a go of the small enterprise. Davis began working in his father's creamery at an early age, making packages for butter and packing it for shipment. He also did sanitation jobs to keep the creamery clean. Besides his jobs in the family business, Davis had a paper route, shoveled snow, collected bottles, and detassled corn for extra income. In high school, he worked for three summers as a rodman for a land-surveying company. He traveled across southern Minnesota, helping to lay out streets, sidewalks, curbs, and gutters. The job paid well, and Davis liked working outdoors.

For the most part, Davis enjoyed school. While he liked some classes better than others, he loved his involvement in sports. He played football in high school and was recruited by two regional colleges for their teams. Davis chose Gustavus Adolphus College, in St. Peter, but soon realized he was not ready for college. Once the football season ended, he quit school and began driving a truck, collecting milk from area farms and delivering it to the factory. About six months into his job, he was driving along a road when a harvester hit his truck. It tipped into a ditch, and Davis was thrown around inside the cab, resulting in a broken back. A few weeks later, he was helping at the site of another farming accident. He picked up a sheep, which further injured his back and temporarily landed him in the hospital. For the next 20 years, he had to wear a back brace.

While recuperating, Davis decided to return to school. He enrolled in Mankato State College (later Minnesota State) and majored in business and economics. "This time, I did much better in school," he says. "I felt ready for the challenge, and my classes at this school were more engaging."

Davis worked throughout his college years, driving both the milk truck and a school bus. He married while in school, and his wife, Mary, contributed to their income by working as an administrative assistant. Their newborn sons were put with a reliable babysitter while their parents worked and Davis attended college. After his graduation in 1963, Davis presented his father with his idea of a proper work arrangement and terms. His father, in turn, offered Davis his own concept of an arrangement. Davis and his wife accepted his father's offer, and Davis worked for his father from 1964 to 1969.

The young couple lived above an insurance agent's office at first, and by 1969 they had five children. At that time, Davis and his father partnered with the owner of a creamery in Le Sueur, Minnesota, about 10 miles up the road. Davis was put in charge of the small, struggling creamery, which made assorted dairy products. In 1970, he began to focus the business on cheese production and milk procurement; in 1973, he renamed it Le Sueur Cheese Company.

In 1970, Davis traveled to Europe to learn about cheesemaking, processing, and ingredient usage. He developed relationships with peers, both European and domestic, who would become his lifelong mentors, advisers, and friends. In 1972, he began a more focused and expansive relationship with Kraft Foods, which became an important part of Davis's ultimate success in business. He also cultivated relationships with local dairy farmers because he was in competition for milk with the large farm cooperatives. Davis developed a robust and secure supply of local milk, which proved vital to his company's efforts to become a premier and preferred supplier to Kraft Foods.

In 1978, Davis visited a group of Welsh investors who were struggling with a new technology to extract protein from cheese whey. He developed a joint venture in that technology, which became one of the main pillars of what would evolve over the next 25 years into a $1.2 billion dairy company. Eventually, Davis acquired the venture's entire European assets, as well as its intellectual property assets. He became the sole owner of this technology and products. "I never invented anything," he says. "I just took advantage of someone else's innovation and turned it into a real process, a real product."

This innovative technology launched the company into a position of global leadership in the field, as well as onto the world stage as a dairy processor and manufacturer. In 1986, St. Peter Creamery, Inc., Le Sueur Cheese Company, Inc., and Nicollet Foods Products, Inc. merged to form Davisco Foods International, Inc. As markets expanded and product demands increased, Davisco established greenfield cheese and ingredient factories in Idaho in 1992 and South Dakota in 2001. Davisco Foods eventually grew to produce 1 million pounds of cheese a day and 10 million pounds of whey protein isolates annually, thus accounting for 65 percent of whey protein isolates sold worldwide. Davis served as president and CEO until 2012. That same year, Davis became Davisco's chairman.

Mark Davis is a natural leader who experienced many challenges and opportunities in his career, but he discovered that hard work, honesty in his business dealings, and perseverance through difficult times made him feel that anything was possible. "If I had a philosophy of life," he says, "I guess it would be the age-old idea of treating people the way you would like to be treated. That simple thought covers a lot of things in life and business."

Davis also believes that he benefited from hard work, beginning in his youth and continuing to today. "If I had any advice for young people today, it would be to embrace hard work. Even if parents can afford to pay for everything, I think the child benefits more by working for their future and striving to do their best in whatever job they are in at the time. If they need more education to thoroughly understand their job, then they should be willing to put in the time and effort to gain that knowledge. I believe in always doing your best and more."

Davis remembers that his father believed in self-reliance. "I once asked him to co-sign a loan for me on a farm I wanted to buy. He would not do it, not because he could not, but because he felt I would appreciate it more if I did it all on my own. From him, I learned that self-reliance builds confidence and keeps you engaged in your future."

Asked how he feels about his Horatio Alger Award, Davis says, "It is a marvelous thing. I may have worked hard all my life, but I had it pretty good. We always had food and clothing. I know others have had it rougher than I did, but I am honored to be included into this group of extremely accomplished people."

In 2006, the National Cheese Institute honored Davis with its Laureate Award, which recognizes significant, long-term individual contributions to the development and growth of the U.S. cheese industry. The following year, Davis was inducted into the Minnesota Business Hall of Fame. He also received the American Dairy Products Institute Award of Merit for outstanding contributions to the dairy industry. In addition, Davis was named "Exporter of the Year" by the U.S. Dairy Export Council and Dairy Field magazine for his global leadership in the cheese and food ingredients industry.

Mary and Mark Davis have been married for 53 years and have five children. Although Davis credits his parents with giving him strong values and the opportunity to be a part of their small business, he praises his wife for playing an important role in the development of his business. "There were many nights when Mary would be upstairs in our home doing laundry and taking care of the children, and then she'd be in the basement running milk quality tests," he says. "I'm also grateful to the people who have worked for my company for decades. Many of them I hired as teenagers. They were friends and classmates of my children, looking for summer jobs. A lot them stayed on and are now in management positions. I couldn't have accomplished all I have without the help of all these people. The company grew because the people who did hands-on work gained knowledge and experience, then went on to train and lead other workers. They did it well because they had experience from the ground up. Nothing can replace that."