Geoffrey Blackwell serves as the general counsel and chief of staff of the National Congress of American Indians. He is a recognized expert in tribal economic and corporate development as well as communications infrastructure deployment. Blackwell’s work with American Indian tribes, Alaska Native Villages, and Native Hawaiians has taken him to some of the most remote regions in the United States and to other Indigenous communities worldwide.

In 2020, Blackwell was a recipient of Public Knowledge’s IP3 Internet Protocol Award for his broadband policy advocacy on behalf of tribal nations. He has testified before the U.S. Congress on seven occasions and before the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights—both as a tribal representative and as a senior federal regulator and policymaker.

Blackwell is active with national organizations that provide tribal nations and Native communities with services and advocacy. He serves on the board of the Native American Rights Fund and is the vice president of the advisory board for the American Indian Policy Institute at Arizona State University. Blackwell previously served on the boards of the National Small Business Association, National Federation of Community Broadcasters, Native Public Media, Acoma Pueblo Business Enterprises, and Indigenous Commission for Communications Technologies in the Americas.

Blackwell’s past roles include serving as the first chief strategy officer and general counsel for AMERIND Risk Management Corporation, where he was the executive manager of the Legal, Finance, Information Technology, Human Resources, Corporate Communications, and Critical Infrastructure Broadband teams.

In 2010, Blackwell was the founding chief of the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC’s) Office of Native Affairs and Policy. He was responsible for developing an agency-wide regulatory agenda to bring modern communications technologies to tribal communities nationwide. Earlier, in 2000, Blackwell became the first enrolled member of a federally recognized tribe to work at the FCC, where he served as a senior attorney and the agency’s first formal liaison to tribal governments. During his time at the FCC, he worked on seminal FCC tribal programs and policies, including Universal Service Fund programs and carrier designations, spectrum licensing, tower siting, and radio and TV broadcast licensing. He helped oversee economic subsidy regulations for hundreds of companies.

Between his two periods of federal service, Blackwell served as a corporate director at Chickasaw Nation Industries, Inc., helping structure, develop, and guide more than a dozen diverse LLCs and federal contracting companies. He began his legal career in the corporate litigation department of Hale and Dorr, LLP, in Boston.

Raised in Oklahoma and New Mexico and having spent significant time as a young adult in Washington, D.C., Blackwell comes from a family of tribal leaders and federal officials dedicated to service in Indian Country. He is a graduate of Dartmouth College and the University of Virginia School of Law. Blackwell is Muscogee (Creek), Chickasaw, Choctaw, and Omaha.

Valerie Fast Horse considers herself a communication technology enthusiast and social engineer for change. Her official title is IT director for the Coeur d’Alene Tribe. She manages the tribe’s IT department, geographic information system (GIS) program, Red-Spectrum Communications (the tribe’s broadband provider), and KWIS 88.3 FM (the tribe’s radio station).

In 2005 she successfully planned and implemented a $2.8 million broadband grant which allowed her and her team to bring broadband to the Coeur d’Alene Reservation for the first time. In 2015 they also completed a $10.2 million fiber-to-the-home project to upgrade and expand the broadband network, constructing new wireless towers and more than 121 route miles of fiber. Through these efforts Red-Spectrum Communications was born and reaches more than 3,000 homes with either fiber or wireless connections.

Fast Horse is a former elected tribal leader who served six years as a tribal council member. In 2011 she was appointed to serve on the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Native Nations Broadband Task Force. She also served on the FCC Broadband Deployment Advisory Committee and is an ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) fellow keeping current with the global dialogue on the future of the Internet.

Fast Horse is a recipient of the Idaho Women Making History Award from the Boise State Women’s Center.

Casey Lozar is a vice president at the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis and director of CICD, a research and policy institute that works to advance the economic self-determination and prosperity of Native nations and Indigenous communities. Before assuming leadership of CICD, he was assistant vice president/outreach executive in the Bank’s department of Public Affairs, and the leader of our Helena Branch.

Prior to joining the Minneapolis Fed in 2018, Lozar served in economic development and higher education roles for the State of Montana. Additionally, he held executive leadership positions in national Native American nonprofits, including the American Indian College Fund and the Notah Begay III Foundation.

He received degrees from Dartmouth College and Harvard University and an MBA from the University of Colorado-Denver. He serves on the Montana Board of Regents of Higher Education (past chair).

Lozar is the 2021 recipient of the Janet L. Yellen Award for Excellence in Community Development and a 2022 recipient of the Honorary Leadership Award from the Native American Finance Officers Association.

A Montana native, he was raised on the Flathead Indian Reservation and is an enrolled member of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes.

Since 2014, Traci Morris has been the executive director of the American Indian Policy Institute (AIPI) at Arizona State University (ASU). She is a member of the Chickasaw Nation of Oklahoma. Under her leadership, AIPI has grown and diversified its service to Indian Country—providing policy analysis, tribally driven research, and capacity building, and working with such Indian Country partners as the National Congress of American Indians, Native American Finance Officers Association, and American Indian Science and Engineering Society. A national expert in tribal broadband and access, Morris has testified at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and on Capitol Hill. She is an expert on tribal digital equity, broadband policies, and digital sovereignty.

Throughout her career, Morris has worked with Native nations, tribal businesses, and Native American nonprofits. Her research and publications focus on Internet use, digital inclusion, network neutrality, digital equity, and the development of broadband networks in Indian Country. Morris spearheaded and co-authored the groundbreaking Tribal Technology Assessment: The State of Internet Service on Tribal Lands in 2019. Her book Native American Voices: A Reader continues to be a primary teaching tool in colleges throughout the country.

Morris is an affiliated faculty at ASU’s School for the Future of Innovation in Society and an affiliate of ASU’s Center for Gender Equity in Science and Technology and Center on Technology, Data, and Society. She also serves as a sustainability scholar in the ASU School of Sustainability.

Morris’ community service includes being a board member and former president of the Phoenix Indian Center and serving on the American Indian Science and Engineering Society board of directors and the Association of Tribal Archives, Libraries, and Museums advisory council. She also serves as a member of the National Tribal Library Broadband Council. Formerly, Morris held two-year appointments (2014–2016 and 2010–2012) to the FCC’s Consumer Advisory Committee and was a member of the advisory board for the U.S. Department of Labor’s Native American Employment and Training Council.

As an entrepreneur prior to her ASU appointment, Morris founded Homahota Consulting LLC, a national Native American woman-owned professional services firm that works in policy analysis, telecommunications, education, and research; assists tribes in their nation-building efforts; and works with Native nations, tribal businesses, and businesses working with tribes.

Morris has an M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Arizona’s American Indian Studies program and a B.A. in liberal arts from Colorado State University.

Matthew R. Rantanen has been the director of technology for the Southern California Tribal Chairmen’s Association (SCTCA) and the director of SCTCA’s Tribal Digital Village initiative for 21 years, designing and deploying networking that supports the tribal communities of Southern California. He also currently serves as the vice president of tribal broadband at the Golden State Network, focusing on tribal opportunities in the governor’s Middle-Mile Broadband Initiative.

Rantanen previously supported business development and partnering at Arcadian Infracom, a fiber infrastructure company, building long-haul fiber assets to serve the needs of Indian Country and rural communities.

A lineal descendent of Cree (First Nations, Canada), Finnish, and Norwegian ancestry, Rantanen has been described by his peers as a “cyber warrior for tribal community networking” and is considered an expert on community and tribal networking. Rantanen helps SCTCA’s 25 member tribes with technology development and strategy.

Rantanen was appointed co-chair of the Technology and Telecom Subcommittee of the National Congress of American Indians. In this role, he works with tribes to draft telecom policy and promote better opportunities for tribes within the federal government. He also serves on the advisory board of Arizona State University’s American Indian Policy Institute.

Rantanen was named to the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC’s) Native Nations Broadband Task Force by FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski in 2011 and then reappointed under FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler, serving two full terms. In June 2013, he was named to the FCC’s Communications Security, Reliability, and Interoperability Council IV. Rantanen also served as a two-term chairman of the board at Native Public Media, where he also held the vice chair and treasurer positions.

Rantanen is a subject matter expert and frequent guest speaker on community networking and grassroots efforts to support unserved and underserved communities, with emphasis on tribal communities. His speaking venues have ranged from local and state governments to various federal agencies. International speaking engagements have included multiple ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) and Internet Governance Forum meetings. He has testified several times at hearings for the FCC, U.S. Government Accountability Office, and California Public Utilities Commission.

Steve Shepelwich is a lead community development advisor for the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City in the Oklahoma City Branch Office. Shepelwich’s work connects workers with jobs, improves the quality of lower-wage jobs, and helps institutions leverage the Community Reinvestment Act to support workforce development programs. He is currently partnering with the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta on the role of public benefits in supporting positive employment outcomes.

Shepelwich began his community development career in the Peace Corps in Kenya as a small business advisor, then worked with other organizations in the region for six years. Before joining the Kansas City Fed in 2004, he worked for a Washington, D.C., consulting group assisting CDFIs (Community Development Financial Institutions) and asset-building and economic development organizations.

A Texas native, Shepelwich studied marketing as an undergrad at Texas A&M. A six-month internship with a rural development program in India sparked his interest in community development. Shepelwich received his master’s degree from Michigan State University and attended the Graduate School of Banking at the University of Wisconsin.

Shepelwich is active with Goodwill Industries and Rotary, part of a community disaster response team, and volunteers with Wildcare Foundation, Oklahoma’s largest wildlife rehabilitation program.

H. Trostle (they/them) is a two-spirit citizen of the Cherokee Nation. They lead CICD’s portfolio of work on tribal economic infrastructure.

H has previously worked at the American Indian Policy Institute of Arizona State University and at the Institute for Local Self-Reliance in Minneapolis. For the past eight years, H has focused on broadband policy. Their work has been featured in High Country News and Ars Technica.

H studied Indigenous planning and holds a master’s in urban and environmental planning from Arizona State University. They are currently pursuing a graduate certificate in tribal sovereignty and federal Indian law at the University of Minnesota Duluth.

Danae Wilson works to bring technology services to regions and communities where service does not exist or is extremely limited. She is the assistant director for Internet access at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.

Wilson previously served as the telecom and technology co-chair for the Affiliated Tribes of Northwest Indians, the Native Nations Communication Task Force Committee co-chair for the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), a member of the FCC Intergovernmental Affairs Committee, a member of the Native Public Media Advisory Board, a member of the State of Idaho Broadband Task Force, and the National Congress of American Indians’ representative to the FirstNet Authority tribal working group and SAFECOM.