Helen Ness

## Helen Ness, CEO, Kilbourne Urban Design

* **Name:**Helen Michelle Ness
* **Position:** *Deceased*(formerly Chief Executive Officer ofKilbourne Urban Design , Acting Chair of the Group Shareholders Board of the Red River Valley Investment, Holdings and Development Group. Guest Lecturer on Business Architecture for the NDRUCollege of Business.)
* **Metatype:**Human  (*Homo sapiens sapiens*)
* **Magical Tradition:** Hermetic (Masonic Temple of the Western Bank)
* **DOB:**11/14/2022, West Fargo ND (Now called Maitomoni'ohe, Upper Yankton CF, Oceti Sakowin)
* **DOD:** 12/21/2075, Age 53, Killed by terrorists during the Solstice Blackout
* **Education:**Holds a Bachelors of Architecture from the University of Minnesota, a Masters of Astral Architecture from the University of Michigan - Ann Arbor and a Doctorate of Business Administration from University of Minnesota.
* **Family:**Richard Ness (father, Harwood Securitract, Region 3, RRDMZ ), Katherine [Gehrig] Ness (mother, deceased), Paul Berg (husband, Fargo RRDMZ), Andrew Gehrig (grandfather, Sint Willibrordus, Curaçao, Caribbean League), Renee Gehrig (grandmother, Sint Willibrordus, Curaçao, Caribbean League), Joanna Kramer (husband's cousin, deceased)

The Old Man might be the heart of the Group, but for the last twenty years, Helen Ness has been its face. A potent force of personality in her early schooling, nobody was particularly surprised when her magical talents emerged at age 12. A graduate of West Fargo High School (Class of '42), Helen attended the University of Minnesota for Architecture and then took an Ares scholarship to the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, where she studied magical and astral construction. She returned to Fargo in 2050, after interning at Willow Run Construction, to take a position as a junior architect with the Fargo firm of Arteka Architects, where she was initiated into the Masonic Temple of the Western Bank. At Arteka, she worked closely with contacts from Kilbourne Urban Design and other Block firms in arranging the details and logistics of building projects. While she had initially intended to advance into designing her own buildings, at Arteka she discovered a talent for infrastructure and harmonizing the grand plans on the blueprints with the practical needs of the people using it. It was this talent that led her in 2054 to accept a position at KUD as a Project Coordinator, where her work earned her a promotion to a Consultant in the Office of the Chairman, which included the honor of working directly with the Old Man, in 2058 and then as Assistant Chief of Operations 2059 and Chief Operations Officer in 2064 as part of the New Broom initiative following the Red River Crisis of '64, where she has remained for the last 11 years, guiding Kilbourne Urban Design and the Group.

Since 2059 she has served as the public representative of the Group, often speaking in proxy for the elderly and bedridden Old Man. She has chaired every meeting of the Shareholders' Board since 2065 and instituted several of the most notable initiatives in the last decade. She is known to be hard-working, nearly to the point of obsession, and fiercely loyal to both the person and the vision of the Old Man, making sure the company adheres to his intentions, even as his condition deteriorates.

In the wake of the Old Man's death, Ness had taken de facto control of the Group, personally leading the liaison with Corporate Court auditor Huang Hui Yin and as of 8/19/75 Ness had taken on the official position of CEO of Kilbourne Urban Design and the Board of the Group voted 5-4 to confirm her as the new Chair of the Board.

Ness was among those slain in the terrible events of the Solstice Blackout. Details of her death are being withheld by the courts until such time as the full truth of those events can be ascertained, but it is known that her funeral was closed casket, and it is known on good authority that she ended her life with a bullet in her throat.

She is survived by her husband Paul Berg, a Brooklyn Park native, who met Helen while they were both at Architecture school at the UofM, where they married and he followed her to Ann Arbor and later Fargo. He got work, as a Quality Control inspector for KUD, actually preceding his wife joining the company by nearly four years. After leaving KUD in 2059, he served for three years at JLG Architects before taking a position in 2062 as a adjutant professor of Architecture at NDRU, gaining tenure in 2071. The Knight Errant inquest in the wake of the Blackout cleared him of all charges.

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