Back before Renee Alexander fell into her first summer working as a college intern at the Minnesota State Fair, the now-CEO figured it was a one-month operation.
"I probably thought that people just showed up the first of August and turned on the lights and made it happen," she said in a recent interview from her new corner office in the squat fair administration building near the main entrance off Snelling Avenue.
From summer intern to CEO with a salary of $325,000, Alexander feels the new weight. "The buck stops with me," she said, in recognition of the heft of the added prominence and duties in succeeding Jerry Hammer, who retired after 27 years in the top job.
In her job interview earlier this year with the State Agricultural Society, which hired her to replace Hammer, Alexander said she talked about her affection for the event where she saw her first concerts — Alabama and Kenny Loggins in 1985.
"I love what I do and I love what we stand for," she said. "I'm not coming in to turn things upside down. This is about staying the course. We're on a good trajectory."
She took over from Hammer in May and settled into the office he had filled with decades of memorabilia, photos and tchotchkes. As of mid-July, the place was clean and mostly empty. One picture leaning against the wall had yet to be hung: the 2023 official fair poster, marking her first as CEO.
On Day 1, she'll be at the gate for the first visitors, which she said is always fun and surprising. "You've been planning this party all year and it's like, they came, they actually came," she said.
After growing up in Coon Rapids, Alexander studied business communications at the University of Wisconsin-River Falls, expecting a career in the corporate world. Before her senior year in the summer of 1989, she landed an internship at the fair that she'd happened into through an extended grapevine of friends and family.