VaRene Martin is an enrolled citizen of Thlopthlocco Tribal Town, Mvskoke (Creek) Nation. She serves on the board of NAFOA as the First Vice President and director of tribal and corporate relations. She also acts as a tribal advisor at FS Advisors in a business development capacity.

Martin serves as an advisory board member for the American Indian Chamber of Commerce of California and the American Indian Chamber of Commerce of Oklahoma. She co-chairs the National Congress of American Indian’s (NCAI’s) Economic Development, Finance, and Employment Subcommittee and has served on the board for the San Diego American Indian Health Center.

Martin attended Oklahoma State University. She holds a California Life Insurance National Association of Securities Dealers (NASD) series 65 license, and previously held series 6, 7, and 63 licenses. She has more than 30 years of experience in the financial and investment industries including managerial positions focusing on institutional sales, public funds, and Native American marketing efforts.

Martin was recognized as one of the “Fifty Faces of Indian Country” by Indian Country Today, has been featured in the Indigenous Post “Annual Hot List,” and was a 2020 AARP Oklahoma Indian Elders honoree.

Robert Miller is the Willard H. Pedrick Distinguished Research Scholar and the faculty director of the Rosette LLP American Indian Economic Development Program. He is the chief justice for the Pascua Yaqui Tribe Court of Appeals and an appellate judge for other tribal courts. Miller was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 2014, the oldest learned society in the United States.

He has written dozens of articles on Indian law issues and has authored or co-authored four books, including Reservation “Capitalism”: Economic Development in Indian Country (Praeger Publishers 2012) and Creating Private Sector Economies in Native America: Sustainable Development Through Entrepreneurship (Cambridge University Press 2019).

Miller is a citizen of the Eastern Shawnee Tribe. He is a member of the CICD Leadership Council.

John Morseau is a senior policy analyst at CICD, where he focuses on CICD’s tribal financing, credit, and taxation portfolios of work. He is also an attorney and has previously served with Michigan Indian Legal Services, Orsted Americas, and the Pokagon Gaming Authority Board.

Morseau is an at-large member of the Pokagon Band of Potawatomi Indians tribal council and previously served on the tribe’s executive governing body.

Rebecca Naragon is United South and Eastern Tribes’ (USET’s) economic development director. Over the past few years, USET's Office of Economic Development has been working with USET’s Office of Environmental Resource Management (OERM) and Climate Change program to facilitate training workshops and camps, resource and network brokering, and supply chain technical assistance in support of community and business recovery activities. Naragon is a Certified Economic Developer (CEcD)

She is a citizen of the Poarch Band of Creek Indians.

Ryan Nunn leads applied research in Community Development and Engagement and CICD at the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis. His team works to supply policymakers and practitioners with evidence that can inform decision making and improve outcomes for low- and moderate-income communities.

Before coming to the Bank, Nunn was a fellow in economic studies at the Brookings Institution and policy director for the Hamilton Project. Prior to that, he was an economist at the U.S. Department of the Treasury. Nunn’s work has focused on analysis of labor market trends and institutions. He has published research in journals including Labour Economics, the European Economic Review, and the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science.

Nunn received his undergraduate degree in economics from Case Western Reserve University and his Ph.D. in public policy and economics from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

Vanessa Palmer is CICD’s data director. She supports CICD’s mission to increase economic inclusion and long-term prosperity in Indian Country by leading efforts to collect, harmonize, and sustainably manage research-ready data. She also contributes to CICD’s work as an applied researcher, using statistical tools and data visualization to help stakeholders better understand issues affecting Indian Country.

Palmer joined the Minneapolis Fed in 2020 as a data scientist. Her prior professional roles focused on supporting a range of organizations—primarily in public education—in designing systems and using data to make evidence-based decisions. She holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of Washington and a master’s degree from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

Vanessa Roanhorse is the CEO of Roanhorse Consulting, LLC, an Indigenous-led firm that works to change power dynamics in health and economic systems to build a world in which our children and grandchildren will thrive.

She sits on the boards of Delta Institute, Seven Fires, and Potlikker Capital. She also serves as an advisor to We Write the Future, the Decolonizing Wealth Project, the Investment Integration Project working group, and the BOOST initiative. Roanhorse is a recipient of the 2022 Miss Porter’s School Evan Burger Donaldson Award, 2021 PayPal Maggie Lena Walker’s Emerging Leader Award, and 2020 Conscious Company Media’s World Changing Woman in Sustainable Business Award, and has been a Purpose Futures Fellow and Boston Impact Initiative Fellow. She is a founding member of Zebras Unite Co-op and a co-founder of Native Women Lead.

She is a citizen of the Navajo Nation and resides on Tiwa Territory in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Amber Schulz-Oliver is the executive director of the Affiliated Tribes of Northwest Indians (ATNI), an organization dedicated to promoting tribal self-determination and sovereignty and serving 57 tribal nations in the Pacific Northwest. She previously served as executive director of the ATNI Economic Development Corporation and its subsidiary Community Development Financial Institution (CDFI), ATNI Financial Services.

Schulz-Oliver received a Bachelor of Arts from Oberlin College and an MBA from Willamette University. She serves on the boards of several organizations, including the Potlatch Fund, Nch’i Wana Housing, Oregon Growth Board, Ecotrust Community Development Entity, and Ecotrust Investments. She is committed to environmental stewardship, sustainability, and service to the Native community.

Darien Siguenza is a business development professional with a deep passion for supporting ventures founded by women and people of color. She currently leads the Hawaiʻi FoundHer program, which focuses on uplifting wāhine (female) entrepreneurs who are grounded in Hawaiʻi. She has also supported more than 100 start-up companies while working at Los Angeles Cleantech Incubator and Elemental Excelerator.

Siguenza earned her master’s degree in global leadership and sustainable development at Hawaiʻi Pacific University. She is originally from Los Angeles.

Niiyokamigaabaw Deondre Smiles is an Indigenous geographer with multifaceted research interests including Indigenous geographies and epistemologies, science and technology studies, and tribal cultural resource preservation and protection. Smiles is an assistant professor in the Department of Geography at the University of Victoria in British Columbia.

Smiles received a bachelor’s degree in geography from St. Cloud State University (2013), a master’s degree in global Indigenous studies from the University of Minnesota Duluth (2016), and a Ph.D. in geography from The Ohio State University (2020), where Smiles also spent a year as a President’s Postdoctoral Scholar in the Department of History.

Smiles holds a number of leadership roles for the American Association of Geographers and is a member of the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association and the Canadian Association of Geographers. Smiles also serves as the principal investigator of the Geographic Indigenous Futures Collaboratory (GIF Lab), which focuses on Indigenous geographic methods and collaborations with Indigenous communities, in addition to holding an affiliation with the University of Victoria’s Health, Environments, and Communities Research Lab (HEC Lab) and the University of British Columbia’s Egesta Lab. Smiles also serves on the editorial board of the journal Native American and Indigenous Studies and on the Leech Lake Tribal College board of trustees.

Smiles is of Ojibwe, Black, and Swedish descent and is a citizen of the Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe.

Alene Tchourumoff, senior vice president of Community Development and CICD, leads the Bank’s engagement with communities throughout the Ninth District to promote economic opportunity for low- and moderate-income people and those living in Indian Country. Key focus areas include early childhood development and affordable housing.

Prior to joining the Bank in December 2018, Tchourumoff served as chair of Minnesota’s Metropolitan Council, where she built strong partnerships with local governments and community groups to advance transit, housing, and other critical infrastructure. Previously, she served as Minnesota’s first state rail director, led Hennepin County Public Works’ Planning Department, and worked extensively in China and Southeast Asia on public policy and public health initiatives—including combating HIV/AIDS in China and Vietnam.

Tchourumoff holds a bachelor’s degree in business administration from George Washington University School of Business and a master’s degree in public policy from Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government.

She was named a 2020 Women in Business honoree by the Minneapolis-St. Paul Business Journal and is a member of the Minnesota State Attorney General’s task force dedicated to improving women’s economic security.

Robert Torzynski has served as a professional planner for three decades for organizations in California, New York, and Michigan. His areas of specialty include environmental, air quality, transportation, and tribal planning.

Torzynski earned a master’s degree in city and regional planning from California State University, Fresno. He has been a member of the American Institute of Certified Planners since 1998. Since 2017, he has served as the planning manager for the Pokagon Band of Potawatomi Indians.

Lisa M. Watkins-Victorino received her Ph.D. in psychology from the University of Hawaiʻi where she worked for 12 years as a junior specialist in the School of Social Work coordinating evaluation and research projects. She joined the Hawaiʻi Department of Education (HIDOE) in 2003 and served as an educational officer for nine years, responsible for the implementation, analysis, and reporting of statewide educational accountability projects.

Watkins-Victorino joined the Office of Hawaiian Affairs in 2012 as the director of research. In this role she provided oversight of research projects associated with strategic plan priorities in the areas of land, culture, history, demography, economic stability, education, and health, as well as leading other designated projects. During this time, she served on multiple committees and task forces, including the Native Hawaiian Data Portal.

Watkins-Victorino recently rejoined HIDOE and serves as the director of the Assessment and Accountability Branch where she is responsible for oversight of the department’s accountability and related data-processing systems as well as statewide student assessment system services.