Board Members

President -- Miriam Jorgensen, University of Arizona.

President-Elect -- Randy Akee, UCLA.

Secretary -- Valentina Dimitrova-Grajzl, Virginia Military Institute.

Treasurer -- Jonathan Taylor, The Taylor Policy Group.

Member -- Joseph Kalt, Professor Emeritus, Harvard University.

Member -- Ronald Trosper, Professor, University of Arizona.

Member -- Malia Villegas, Afognak Native Corporation.

Biographies of Board Members

President -- Miriam Jorgensen, University of Arizona.

Miriam Jorgensen is a Research Director of the University of Arizona Native Nations Institute, Research Director of the Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development, and Professor of Indigenous Nation Building at the University of Technology Sydney Jumbunna Institute for Indigenous Education and Research. Her work in Indigenous governance and economic development—in the United States, Canada, and Australia—has addressed issues as wide-ranging as child welfare policy, policing and justice systems, natural-resource management, cultural stewardship, land ownership, tribal enterprises, housing, financial education, and philanthropy.

 She is a co-author of Structuring Sovereignty: Constitutions of Native Nations (UCLA AIS Press 2014) and The State of the Native Nations: Conditions under US Policies of Self-Determination (Oxford University Press 2008); editor and co-author of Creating Private Sector Economies in Native America: Sustainable Development through Entrepreneurship (Cambridge University Press 2019), Indigenous Justice: New Tools, Approaches and Spaces (Palgrave Macmillan 2018), and Rebuilding Native Nations: Strategies for Governance and Development (University of Arizona Press 2007); lead author of the U.S. Treasury Department’s two-part Access to Credit and Capital in Native Communities reports (2016, 2017); and USA senior editor of the International Indigenous Policy Journal.

 Jorgensen co-founded the University of Arizona Indigenous Governance program. She has been a Visiting Scholar in law and social work at Washington University in St. Louis; a Distinguished Visiting Scholar at the University of Technology Sydney; and Professorial Research Fellow at the Melbourne School of Government. She received her BA in economics from Swarthmore College, MA in human sciences from the University of Oxford, and both an MPP in international development and PhD in political economics from Harvard University.

President-Elect -- Randy Akee, UCLA.

Randall Akee is an associate professor in the Department of Public Policy and American Indian Studies at UCLA. Prior to that, Dr. Akee was an Assistant Professor of Economics at Tufts University. Dr. Akee completed his doctorate at Harvard University in June 2006. Dr. Akee is an applied microeconomist and has worked in the areas of Labor Economics, Economic Development and Migration. He has conducted research on the determinants of migration and human trafficking, the effect of changes in household income on educational attainment and obesity, the effect of political institutions on economic development and the role of property institutions on investment decisions.  He has conducted research on several American Indian reservations, Canadian First Nations, and Pacific Island nations in addition to working in various Native Hawaiian communities. His research has been published in top general interest economics journals and top field journals such as the American Economic Review, American Economics Journal: Applied Economics, Journal of Economic Perspectives, Journal of Development Economics, Journal of Law and Economics. Additionally, Dr. Akee has published in discipline specific journals such as Demography, American Indian Cultural and Research Journal, Journal of American Indian Education, and International Indigenous Policy Journal. Dr. Akee also spent several years working for the State of Hawaii Office of Hawaiian Affairs Economic Development Division. He is a research fellow at the Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development and the Center for Effective Global Action at UC Berkeley. He also serves on the National Advisory Council on Race, Ethnic, and Other Populations at the US Census Bureau. He is also a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research.

Secretary -- Valentina Dimitrova-Grajzl, Virginia Military Institute.

Valentina Dimitrova-Grajzl is a Professor of Economics at the Virginia Military Institute, where she has spent the last eight years. Prior to VMI, she was an assistant professor at the Department of Public Policy at Central European University and a visiting assistant professor at Washington and Lee University. She received her Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Maryland, College Park. She also holds a Master’s degree from the University of Maryland and a Bachelor’s Degree from Wittenberg University. Her teaching and research focuses on economics of institutions, post-socialist economies and politics, American Indian economic development, economic history, and law and economics.

Treasurer -- Jonathan Taylor, The Taylor Policy Group.

Jonathan Taylor is an economist with expertise in natural resources, gaming, and American Indian development. He provides counsel to Native nations in the United States and Canada consisting of public policy analysis, strategic advice, and economic research. He has offered expert testimony in litigation and public proceedings for a number of Native American groups.Mr. Taylor has assessed economic impacts of tribal enterprises (including of casinos), assessed tribal tax regimes, assisted in tribal institutional reform, provided public policy analysis and negotiation support for resource development, valued non-market attributes of natural resources, and educated tribal executives.

Mr. Taylor is President of the Taylor Policy Group, an economics and public policy consultancy; a Research Affiliate at the Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development at the Kennedy School of Government; a Senior Policy Associate at the Native Nations Institute, Udall Center for Studies in Public Policy, University of Arizona, Tucson.

Member -- Joseph Kalt, Professor Emeritus, Harvard University.

Joseph P. Kalt is the Ford Foundation Professor (Emeritus) of International Political Economy at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.  He joined the faculty at Harvard in 1978 and is a specialist in the economics of industrial organization, antitrust, economic development, international trade, government regulation and taxation.  The Kennedy School of Government is Harvard’s graduate school for public policy and administration, and Professor Kalt has served as the School’s Academic Dean for Research, chair of degree programs, chair of Ph.D. programs, and chair of the economics and quantitative methods section.  Since 2008, he has also served as a visiting professor at the University of Arizona’s Rogers College of Law and, during 2005-10, at the University’s Eller College of Management.

Professor Kalt is widely recognized for his work in economic development on American Indian reservations and among Indigenous communities worldwide.  In 1987, he founded (with Stephen Cornell) the Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development.  He continues to serve as the Project’s co-director and is a principal author of The State of the Native Nations:  Conditions under U.S. Policies of Self-Determination (with the Harvard Project), co-editor and a primary author of What Can Tribes Do? Strategies and Institutions in the Economic Development of American Indian Reservations (with Stephen Cornell), a principal author of Rebuilding Native Nations:  Strategies for Governance and Development (ed. M. Jorgensen), and co-editor of Universities and Indian Country (with Dennis Norman).  In 2005, Professor Kalt received the National Center for American Indian Enterprise Development’s First American Leadership Award for his research on public policy affecting Native peoples.  In 2010, he and Professor Cornell received the National Congress of American Indians’ award for Public Sector Leadership.

Professor Kalt is also a Senior Economist with Compass Lexecon, a subsidiary of FTI Consulting.  He has testified frequently as an expert on matters of antitrust, regulation, taxation, and economic policy before the U.S. Congress and various state, tribal, federal and international tribunals.  He has also served as a mediator, arbitrator and advisor on matters of regulation, taxation, and economic development to various national and international governments, including the U.S., Thailand, China, Canada, Poland, Belarus, Moldova, Indonesia, and numerous Indigenous nations. 

Professor Kalt is on the Board of Directors of the Native Governance Center and chairman of the Board of the White Mountain Apache Tribe’s Fort Apache Heritage Foundation, Inc.  He has also served on the Navajo Nation’s President’s Council of Economic Advisors and the investment committee of the Board of the Women’s Foundation of Southern Arizona.  He is currently a member of the Board of Advisors of the National Institute for Civil Discourse, the Board of Directors of the Sonoran Institute, and the Advisory Board of the Chickasaw Nation’s Community Development Enterprise,  He served on the U.S. President’s Commission on Aviation Safety and on the Steering Committee of the National Park Service’s National Parks for the 21st Century. 

A native of Tucson, Arizona, Professor Kalt received his Ph.D. (1980) and M.A. (1977) in Economics from the University of California at Los Angeles, and his B.A. (1973) in Economics from Stanford University.

Member -- Ronald Trosper, Professor, University of Arizona.

Ronald Trosper is Professor of American Indian Studies at the University of Arizona.  His latest work has been on Indigenous economic theory, traditional ecological knowledge, and community-based research methods.  He is working on a book tentatively titled Principles of Indigenous Economics (University of Arizona Press). He examined the institutions that provided stability for the peoples of the Northwest Coast in his book, Resilience, Reciprocity and Ecological Economics:  Northwest Coast Sustainability (Routledge, 2009).  He co-edited a book, Traditional Forest Knowledge:  Sustaining Communities, Ecosystems and Bio-cultural Diversity (Springer, 2012), with John Parrotta.  He has worked for the Council of Energy Resource Tribes, the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes, University of Washington, Boston College, Northern Arizona University, and the University of British Columbia.  He earned his Ph.D.  degree in Economics from Harvard University in 1974. He is a member of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes of the Flathead Indian Reservation, Montana.

Member -- Malia Villegas, Afognak Native Corporation.

Dr. Malia Villegas joined Afognak Native Corporation in January 2017 as Vice President of Corporate Affairs, where she oversees government relations, advocacy, public relations, marketing, and impact measurement. As an Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA) Village Corporation, Afognak is ranked 7th on the Top 49ers list of Alaskan companies (2018). Afognak Native Corporation, Alutiiq, LLC, and its family of companies provide an exceptional track record of services in the government and commercial sectors worldwide, including: leasing; facility services; timber; engineering; information technology; security; logistics, operations & maintenance; and youth services.

 Dr. Villegas is an enrolled member of the Native Village of Afognak in Alaska, where she also serves on the Tribal Council. Dr. Villegas is Sugpiaq/Alutiiq (Alaska Native) with family from Kodiak and Afognak Islands in Alaska and O’ahu and Lana’i in Hawai’i.

 Dr. Villegas is honored to serve on the Board of Directors for the Native American Contractors Association to facilitate cross-organization and intertribal collaborative policy solutions that strengthen Native enterprise. Dr. Villegas also serves on the Tribal Nations Advisory Council of the American Indian Science and Engineering Society (AISES) working on intertribal solutions in the domains of workforce development; the interface of science, culture, and small business; and Indigenous technology.

 Prior to joining Afognak Native Corporation, her past experience includes serving as the Director of the National Congress of American Indians (NCAI) Policy Research Center (2011-2016); co-Chair of the National Institutes for Health (NIH) Tribal Consultation Advisory Committee (2014-2016); Principal Investigator of several federal and private grants including those at the National Science Foundation and NIH; Post-Doctoral Fellow at Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane, Australia, as a part of an international evaluation team reviewing the first, national Indigenous school reform effort there (2010-2011); Fulbright Dissertation Fellow at the University of Auckland in New Zealand studying the effort to graduate 500 Māori PhDs in five years (2008); and researcher at First Alaskans Institute in Anchorage, Alaska (2004-2006). She co-edited a volume (with S. R. Neugebauer & K. R. Venegas) entitled, Indigenous Knowledge and Education: Sites of Struggle, Strength, and Survivance (Harvard University Press, 2008).

 Dr. Villegas received her Doctorate in Education and Master's degree in Education from Harvard University, as well as dual Bachelor's degrees in Political Science and Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity from Stanford University.