A Story of Servant Leadership and Success

On the second floor of the National Information Solutions Cooperative (NISC) building in Mandan, N.D., a large conference table able to hold two dozen seats is situated near the bank of windows.

Doug Remboldt, ‘90, ‘96, president and CEO, greets his guests as he walks into the spacious room overlooking the south side of the NISC campus. Instead of sitting at the head of the long corporate table, he sits on the side, about a quarter of the way down.

That small, unassuming gesture captures Remboldt: humble, polite, and confident.

“In my opinion, the secret to the success of this organization is a servant leader,” Remboldt said. “As an organization, our members rely on us to help lead the way technically. But we do that in a way that is purely based on service. Everything we do is based on how we can serve them.”

Remboldt, who took the reins in the spring of 2023, started in 1990 installing accounting products to member customers for NISC’s predecessor, North Central Data Cooperative (NCDC) in Mandan. It was there he met his future wife, Amy. She retired in 2023 after 30 years at the cooperative.

At the time, there were 87 employees. Today, with the merger between NCDC and Central Area Data Processing in 2000, there are now 1,400 employees in Virginia, Iowa, North Dakota, and Missouri serving 930-member owners.

NISC is an information technology organization that develops, implements, and supports software and hardware solutions for utility and telecommunications organizations worldwide. The company was founded in 1966 with two rural electric cooperatives and a rural telephone cooperative in North Dakota merging. In 2024, Computer World announced NISC as one of the top 100 “Best Places to Work in Information Technology” for the 20th straight year.

More than a third of the people employed at NISC are Mary graduates.

“It's an education that has well prepared people for their discipline,” Remboldt said. “But I think beyond that, it's how people interact and how they treat each other that makes a difference. And that's how we have built this organization based on our service to our members and our relationship with them.”