Page 13 - April JSF Report

RESERVATION ECONOMIC SUMMIT REPORT
Sherry Salway Black
RES 2023 Trip Report, April 3 – 6, 2023
I attended the RES 2023 Conference April 3 – 6 at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas. As a refresher, RES stands for Reservation Economic Summit and is an annual event put on by the National Center for American Indian Enterprise Development, this year boasting 4,000 attendees. NCAIED is the largest and oldest Native organization working on economic and business development. The focus for most of their 50-year history has been on businesses that do government contracting and that is still a large part of their focus. In recent years, they have expanded to be more inclusive of small businesses and entrepreneurship. Chris James, the CEO for the past seven years, comes out of the Community Development Financial Institutions field at the community level and at the national level, having worked for his Tribe’s CDFI, the CDFI Fund at Treasury and for the Small Business Administration. Chris has been a presenter at our October Entrepreneurship Meeting and participated in the Indigenous convenings.
I had numerous reasons for attending: 1. It is the best place to go to see/meet Native people involved in economic and business development and to learn what is going on in the field and new trends; 2. I learned that a number of Gonzaga MBA-AIE alums would be attending so I could meet with them about the program and help in focusing in for the October convening; 3. AISES folks would be attending so I could meet with them about specifics on the convening; 4. I learned that AIBL was doing their annual conference in conjunction with RES and I’d be able to meet with the Salish Kootenai College (SKC) folks, which is one of the two schools for my linkage report, plus AIBL is a grantee of JSF; and 5. I could attend sessions pertinent to all of my boards – JSF, Native American Agriculture Fund, and First Peoples Fund.
American Indigenous Business Leaders (AIBL) – I was able to attend a number of sessions of the 2.5-day AIBL conference including the final dinner where they presented the annual awards for things like best chapters, advisors and business plan. They had more than 100 attendees representing their chapters, including high school, university and tribal chapters. The Fort Lewis chapter was the big winner for University Chapter of the Year, Chapter Advisor of the Year and the Business Plan winner for University category. I think I got that correct. SKC won for TCU chapter.
Indigenous Linkage Report – Because of the AIBL conference I was able to meet with Rachel Andrews-Gould, the Dean of the Business Program at SKC and Joni Uhe, one of the business instructors. In addition, a number of the AIBL board were in attendance so I had the opportunity to speak briefly with Dr. Joe McDonald, the retired, but long-time President of the college. I also had the chance to meet with Dr. Larry Gianchetta, the retired Dean of the business school at the University of Montana and long-time AIBL U of M chapter advisor and national AIBL board member.
Indigenous Convening – Kellie Jewett-Fernandez, a VP at the American Indian Science and Engineering Society (AISES), and Angelique Albert reached out to the MBA-AIE alums who were planning to be at RES to coordinate a meeting. Seven of the nine (or maybe 10) who responded were able to make the meeting on Tuesday morning. This group included Angelique and Kellie and five others representing seven different cohorts going back to Cohort 6. I shared that we are focused on working with Gonzaga to provide renewed impetus to the program and that we would be holding our convening in conjunction with the AISES conference in October. I also shared that we would be doing a brief survey of the graduates in preparation for the October convening. I learned quite a bit from this group already – including what an amazing group of leaders they are and how supportive, engaged and proud they are to be MBA-AIE alums. One of the alums who I did not get to meet at the conference is Isabel Yasana who graduated last year and works for Nike. She was one of 40 people who NCAIED honored at RES in the 40 leaders under 40. Also in this group was Veronica Veaux who was in cohort 8 and is now has her PhD and is teaching at Bemidji State University and her daughter, Charity Veaux who is now in cohort 14.
Page 11 HORIZONS