Wielding Power for Good

Annika Krafcik ’20 had never set foot in Alaska before the summer of 2018. A double-degree student at Oberlin, she decided to attend the Sitka Cello Seminar—andthere was no turning back. “I applied because my mom really wanted to visit,” she says. “Little did she know she would lose me to Alaska forever.”

The triple major in cello performance, history, and Russian & Eastern European studies instantly fell in love with Sitka, the close-knit community of 8,000 on the shores of southeast Alaska.

Whether through playing music or doing public interest work, “ the things that people were asking me to do to contribute to the community were things that I really loved about myself and wanted to nurture,” she says.

Seven years later, Krafcik now lives in Sitka full time, giving back to her community in a new position: as deputy legal director for the Sitka Tribe of Alaska. Her path from Oberlin to law school—and finally back north to “The Last Frontier”—held plenty of twists and turns, but it paid off in a big way.

The year after that first Alaska trip, Krafcik used her leadership experience in OSCA, Oberlin’s student-run housing and dining cooperative, to apply for a job as a chef at the Sitka Fine Arts Camp. The multidisciplinary summer camp, run by Oberlin alum Roger Schmidt ’92, encourages creativity and community among the campers and staff. After 11 weeks serving meals and playing the cello around camp, “I was like, ‘Okay, I'm moving here,’” she says.

Graduating in 2020, during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, added new roadblocks to her path back. Frustrated by many of the political decisions being made at high levels of government, she “spent a lot of time thinking about who has power in society and how power is wielded for good or for evil,” she says. 

“There are so many flaws in the legal system, and it's so deeply broken, but we need good people to at least try to wield it for good. If we just hand over the broken system to the people who want to manipulate it even further, we are so screwed.”

To get back to Alaska—a state with no law schools—an energized Krafcik took the LSAT and enrolled in the UCLA School of Law. “[While there]  I definitely got the rap of, ‘Oh, that's the Alaska girl,’” she says. But having Sitka as her north star helped her stay focused in a system designed to push students toward corporate law. 

Her course load focused on topics that would best serve her small community, including a climate change seminar, a tribal legal development clinic, and classes on General Law of the Sea and Indigenous Peoples' Rights. 

The latter two were part of her study abroad experience in Norway during her second year of law school—an adventure funded in part through grants from Oberlin's Center for Russian, East European, and Central Asian Studies .

Ten days after graduating from UCLA in 2024, Krafcik packed her bags and drove more than 3,000 miles from Southern California to Skagway, Alaska. After almost a year clerking for Judge Amanda Browning, the perfect opportunity arrived.

”When the position opened with the Sitka Tribe, I couldn't believe it,” she says. “It’s Native Law, which I specialized in during law school. It allows me to live in Sitka, and it’s a long-term position.” As an associate tribal attorney, she advocates for the court, manages grants from the Department of Justice, updates policies and ordinances, and reviews contracts.

“There’s definitely a steep learning curve, and a cultural learning curve too,” she says. But “I’m really loving all of the work that I get to do.”

Of course, living in Sitka, Krafcik is more than just a lawyer. She sits on the board of the Fine Arts Camp, recently joined a water polo team, and continues to play cello with the Juneau Symphony. She's also excited about her recent appointment to the board of the Southeast Alaska Conservation Council. “The amazing thing about Sitka is you never know what's coming next.”