Stephanie Venn Petersen was born in Duluth, Minnesota to Orville Seward Petersen, an insurance salesman, small business owner and former chair of the Proctor School Board and Ruth Alma (Borg) Petersen, an administrative assistant for the 148th Fighter Wing, a unit of the Minnesota National Guard in Duluth, Minnesota.
Petersen attended Proctor High School in Proctor, Minnesota and graduated in 1967. In May, 2003, Stephanie attended the Harvard Business School Executive Education Women"s Leadership Forum.
Petersen received her nursing degree from the College of Saint Scholastica in Duluth, Minnesota. Petersen started her nursing career working at Saint Mary's Hospital in Duluth, Minnesota in 1967, now called Saint Mary"s Medical Center and part of the Saint Mary"s/Duluth Clinic Health System. In 1970 she moved to Minneapolis where she was the evening charge nurse at Minneapolis Lynnhurst Nursing Home.
Starting in 1974 Petersen worked in the Emergency Department at Research Medical Center and later was charge nurse at Swope Ridge Geriatric Center, both in Kansas City, Missouri.
Transitioning from healthcare to the corporate world, Petersen began working as a real estate agent at Eugene Doctorate Brown, in Kansas City, Kansas in 1978, where she was awarded salesperson of the month in October 1980. In 1981, after having moved back to northern Minnesota, Petersen began reviewing medical records for The Foundation for Healthcare Evaluation in Duluth, Minnesota.
Continuing her entrepreneurial run, Petersen co-founded Superior Resources Incorporated, a medical record review company, in 1985. In 1986, Petersen returned to Minneapolis and refocused her efforts solely on Lake Superior Software, rebranded as Lutheran Social Services Data Systems.
Petersen helped facilitate a decades-long relationship with Westwood, Massachusetts based Meditech, which owns 22 percent of Lutheran Social Services Data Systems.
Petersen served on the Board of Vision Loss Resources from 1988 to 1990. In 1998 Petersen was named President and Chief Operating Officer of Lutheran Social Services Data Systems. In 2001 Petersen purchased a game farm located in the Waterberg Region of South Africa.
