People
Staff
Stephen Cornell is director of the Udall Center for Studies in Public Policy. He also is a professor of sociology and of public administration and policy at The University of Arizona. Prior to joining the Center on July 1, 1998, he was chair of the department of sociology at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD). He is co-founder of the Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development, a research program—headquartered at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University—which he continues to co-direct.
A specialist in political economy and cultural sociology, Cornell holds a Ph.D. degree from the University of Chicago and taught at Harvard University for nine years before moving to UCSD in 1989. He has written widely on Indian affairs, economic development, collective identity, and ethnic and race relations. Among his publications are The Return of the Native: American Indian Political Resurgence, What Can Tribes Do? Strategies and Institutions in American Indian Economic Development (co-edited with Joseph P. Kalt), and Ethnicity and Race: Making Identities in a Changing World (co-authored with Douglas Hartmann).
Dr. Cornell has spent much of the last dozen years working closely with Indian nations in the United States and Canada on economic development, tribal governance, and tribal policy issues. Among his recent policy-related projects are a study of the on-and-off-reservation economic and social impacts of Indian gaming operations and an analysis of Native self-governance in Alaska. He serves on the faculty of the National Executive Education Program for Native American Leadership and is a member of the editorial board of Ethnic and Racial Studies.
Contact:
Tel. (520) 626-4393
Email: scornell@u.arizona.edu
Joseph P. Kalt is the Ford Foundation Professor of International Political Economy at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. Along with Profs. Stephen Cornell and Manley Begay of The University of Arizona, he directs the Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development. In addition, he is the author of numerous studies on economic development and nation building in Indian Country, co-editor (with Stephen Cornell) of What Can Tribes Do? Strategies and Institutions in American Indian Economic Development, and a principle author of the Harvard Project's The State of the Native Nations. Since 1987, the Harvard Project has worked for and with tribes and tribal organizations, providing research, advisory services, and leadership education on issues of nation building. Together with the University of Arizona's Native Nations Institute for Leadership, Management, and Policy, the Harvard Project has formed The Partnership for Native Nation Building .
Since 2005, Prof. Kalt has been a visiting professor at The University of Arizona's Eller College of Management. He is also faculty chair for nation building programs at the Native Nations Institute. Professor Kalt has served as the faculty chair of the Harvard University Native American Program, as well as the Kennedy School 's Academic Dean for Research, chair of degree programs, chair of Ph.D. programs, and chair of the economics and quantitative methods section. He is a member of the Board of Trustees of The Communications Institute. He served as advisor to Canada's Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, a commissioner on the President's Commission on Aviation Safety, and on the Steering Committee of the National Park Service's National Parks for the 21st Century.
Professor Kalt's work in Indian Country includes serving as mediator in the negotiation of the historic agreement which settled endangered species disputes between the White Mountain Apache Tribe and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and which resulted in the Executive Order providing for tribal assumption of authority in natural resource matters. Along with Prof. Keith Allred, Prof. Kalt also mediated the long-standing jurisdictional dispute between the Nez Perce Tribe and the North Central Idaho Jurisdictional Alliance of cities and counties. Prof. Kalt has testified as an expert on American Indian policy and economics in federal and tribal courts, and before the United States Congress. He is a trustee of the White Mountain Apache Tribe's Fort Apache Heritage Foundation, and has represented various tribes in the negotiation of contracts, the rewriting of tribal constitutions, the reform of tribal governments, the design of tribal enterprises, and the securing of compensation for treaty violations and land confiscation. In 2005, Professor Kalt received the National Center for American Indian Enterprise Development's First American Leadership Award for his contributions to research in public policy affecting Native peoples.
Prof. Kalt is a native of Tucson, Arizona . He and his wife, Judy Gans, have two children. He 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 .
Contact:
Tel. (617) 495-4966
Email: joe_kalt@harvard.edu
Diane Enos was the 23rd President of the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community and the second woman elected to this office. She is the great granddaughter of Jose Anton, one of the leaders for the Pima communities prior to the Indian Reorganization Act. Diane is the first member of the Salt River Indian Community to become a lawyer. Enos practiced in the Maricopa County Public Defender’s Office for 11 years, leaving as a Senior Trial Attorney upon being elected as president.
Diane served on the Council for the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community for sixteen years serving four terms prior to being elected President. She was elected to Council while a second-year law student at Arizona State University. She became interested in law and politics while working as a news reporter, covering the proposed Pima Freeway for the "Scottsdale Progress" newspaper. She started law school in 1989, graduated in 1992, and was admitted to the Arizona Bar the same year. She graduated cum laude with a bachelor’s degree in Fine Arts from ASU and planned to pursue a career as an artist. Five of her paintings hang in the Sacaton hospital on the Gila River Indian Community.
Enos is currently the Vice-President of the Inter-Tribal Council of Arizona, the chairwoman of the Arizona Indian Gaming Association and has been appointed as the Western Area delegate to the Tribal Justice Advisory group for the U.S. Department of Justice. She is also the current chair of the Domestic Violence Committee for the Maricopa Association of Governments.
Diane has spent her entire professional life in community service, is dedicated to promoting education for the Salt River Pima-Maricopa people and in creating new opportunities for traditional O’odham (Pima) and Piipaash (Maricopa) life to flourish within the Community. She avidly supports small business and believes that tribal government has a responsibility to plan for development by creating synergies so all Community members can share in the financial gain. In the near future, she hopes to encourage more small business owners to become vendors, employers and “vision-creators” for the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community to enhance the social, economic and cultural foundation of the Community.
Contact :
Tel: (617) 495-1480
Fax: (617) 496-3900
Email: nicole_grenier@harvard.edu
Megan is the Director of the Honoring Nations program at the Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development. Honoring Nations is a national awards program that identifies, celebrates, and shares outstanding examples of tribal governance. Founded in 1998, the awards program spotlights tribal government programs and initiatives that are especially effective in addressing critical concerns and challenges facing the more than 560 Indian nations and their citizens.
Megan is the Vice-Chair for the Board of Directors at the Rosa Minoka Hill Fund, which provides scholarship assistance to American Indian students and she recently served as the Treasurer on the Board of Native Americans in Philanthropy. Previously, she worked as the Director of Development at the University of New Mexico College of Arts and Sciences and Senior Program Officer at the Institute of American Indian Arts. Megan is also the Founder and President of Minoka Organics.
Megan graduated from the University of Chicago with a Master of Arts Degree in the Social Sciences and received a Bachelor of Arts in International Affairs, with an emphasis on Latin America, and Economics from the University of Colorado- Boulder. She also earned an International Baccalaureate degree from the Armand Hammer United World College of the American West.
Contact :
Tel: (617) 496-4229
Fax: (617) 496-3900
Email: megan_hill@harvard.edu
Originally from Nu’uuli, American Samoa, Meagan Taulaimoana (Moana) Palelei HoChing serves as the Assistant Director of Educational Outreach for the Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development at the Wiener Center on Social Policy, Harvard Kennedy School of Government. Previously, Moana worked as the In-Kind Donations Coordinator for HELP of Southern Nevada as an AmeriCorps VISTA.
Moana currently serves as an E3! Ambassador of the White House Initiative on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders (WHIAPPI) initiative. She is an alumna of the National Pacific American Leadership Institute (NAPALI), as well as Harvard University’s Administrative Fellowship Program (AFP). Moana graduated with her Bachelors in Liberal Arts from Harvard University where she concentrated in Social Sciences and a field of study in Government.
Miriam Jorgensen is Research Director for the Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development and its sister program, the Native Nations Institute at the University of Arizona. Dr. Jorgensen received her BA in economics from Swarthmore College, MA in human sciences from the University of Oxford, and MPP and PhD from Harvard University.
Her areas of specialty are Indigenous governance and economic development, with a particular focus on the ways communities’ social and cultural characteristics affect development. Her work has addressed issues as wide-ranging as welfare policy, policing and justice system development, enterprise management, financial education, asset building, and philanthropy.
She is a co-author of The State of the Native Nations: Conditions under U.S. Policies of Self-Determination (Oxford University Press, 2008) and editor and co-author of Rebuilding Native Nations: Strategies for Governance and Development (University of Arizona Press, 2007).
She has been a Visiting Scholar at the Washington University Schools of Law and Social Work; has served as an instructor in economics at Harvard University and Washington University; teaches in the Native Nations Institute’s executive education program for tribal leaders; and is a former member of the Swarthmore College Board of Managers.
Contact:
Email: miriam_jorgensen@harvard.edu
Affiliates
Randall Akee is an Assistant Professor at the University of California, Los Angeles in the Department of Public Policy. He completed his Ph.D. at Harvard University in June 2006.
Prior to his doctoral studies, Dr. Akee earned a Masters degree in International and Development Economics at Yale University. He also spent several years working for the State of Hawaii Office of Hawaiian Affairs Economic Development Division.
Dr. Akee is a research fellow at the Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development and at the Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA). His main research interests are Labor Economics, Economic Development and Migration.
Previous research has focused on the determinants of migration and human trafficking, the effect of changes in household income on educational attainment, the effect of political institutions on economic development and the role of property institutions on investment decisions. Dr. Akee has worked on several American Indian reservations, Canadian First Nations, and Pacific Island nations in addition to working in various Native Hawaiian communities.
From August 2006 until August 2009 he was a Research Associate at IZA, where he also served as Deputy Program Director for Employment and Development. Prior to UCLA, he was an Assistant Professor 2009-2012 at Tufts University and spent a year at the Center for Labor Economics at University of California, Berkeley for AY 2011-2012.
In June 2013 he was named to the U.S. Census Bureau's National Advisory Committe on Racial, Ethnic and Other Populations.
Research Fellow
Misko is an Affiliate Fellow for the Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development.
Misko received her BA from the University of Michigan, and MEd from Harvard Graduate School of Education, and brings a commitment and passion for transformation through education. She worked as an Inclusion Specialist with the Multicultural Center at The Ohio State University, managing events and programs involving American Indian culture and heritage. Her work as the Community Liaison Coordinator for the Institute for Aboriginal Health (IAH) at the University of British Columbia focused on community outreach to promote the wellbeing of First Nations through access and representation in health disciplines. Her traditional name is Miskodagaaginkwe, and she is a member of the Fish Clan.
Contact
Email: miskodagaaginkwe@gmail.com
Affiliate Fellow, Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development, Honoring Nations
Catherine Curtis is a Research Fellow at the Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development. Her research interests include intergovernmental relations, Indian government financing and community economic development.
Prior to her work with the Harvard Project, Ms. Curtis advised the Canadian government on economic development initiatives. In addition, Ms. Curtis worked for many years as a policy analyst on Indian self-government. She has also served on a negotiating team that explored new forms of Indian government and natural resource co-management in Canada's North.
Ms. Curtis obtained her undergraduate education in Political Science and Economics from the University of Toronto. She received a Master's of Public Administration and Policy from the College of Europe in Bruges, Belgium.
Contact:
Email: catherine_curtis@ksg.harvard.edu
Kenneth Grant is a research fellow with the Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development. He is also a senior consultant at Lexecon, Inc., where he consults tribes and bands in the United States and Canada in the areas of governmental restructuring, institutional capacity, and economic development. In addition to co-authoring several studies, he has also supported litigation testimony for tribes needing economic analysis pertaining to issues of treaty rights and/or tribal policies.
During the course his professional career, Mr. Grant has worked closely with Native American leaders on projects ranging from cost-benefit analysis and enterprise feasibility to tribal sovereignty. Specific projects included litigation-related analysis pertaining the economics and public policy of tribal taxation authority, assessing the social and economic impacts of tribal enterprises, facilitating discussions among state, federal, and tribal authorities concerning the use and regulation of natural resources, and assisting tribes undertaking self-governance and constitutional reform. He is most recently a co-author of the report Alaska Native Self-Governance Policy Reform: Toward Implementation of the Alaska Natives Commission Report. Mr. Grant also has specific industry experience in the oil and gas sectors. Prior to joining the Harvard Project and Lexecon, Mr. Grant was an economist with the Overseas Private Investment Corporation in Washington, DC, where he conducted market analyses and researched employment effects and capital requirements of proposed projects. As an instructor for the Harvard Institute for International Development, Mr. Grant taught cost-benefit analysis, project analysis, and microeconomics to officials from utilities, regulatory agencies, and economic development banks in the developing world.
Mr. Grant received a B.A. in economics cum laude from Middlebury College (1986) and an M.P.P. from the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University (1993).
Contact:
Tel. (617) 520-0214
Email: kgrant@lexecon.com
Eric Henson is a research fellow with the Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development. He is also a consultant with Lexecon.
Mr. Henson's expertise is economic and financial analysis in the areas of oil and gas valuation, antitrust claims, and market structures. Prior to joining the Harvard Project and Lexecon, he was an Industry Analyst at Fidelity Investments in Boston, where he assisted in the development of quantitative models to forecast outperformance of S&P 500 Industry groups. He also programmed econometric software and macros to process performance reports. From 1995 to 1996, Mr. Henson was the manager of the United States Economic Database at Haver Analytics in New York City.
Mr. Henson holds a B.B.A. in business economics from the University of Texas at San Antonio (1992), an M.A. in economics from Southern Methodist University (1995), and an M.P.P. from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard (1998). At Harvard, Mr. Henson focused on the interaction of government and business. His thesis examined the importance of a Uniform Commercial Code for economic development on Native American Reservations, and he was a Christian Johnson Native American Fellow.
Contact:
Tel. (520) 615-5334
Email: ehenson@lexecon.com
Amy Besaw Medford is the former Director of Program Development at the Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government and Manager of Program Development at the Native Nations Institute for Leadership, Management, and Policy at the Udall Center for Studies in Social Policy at the University of Arizona. Through applied research and service, the Harvard Project and NNI aim to understand and foster the conditions under which sustained, self-determined social and economic development is achieved among American Indian nations.
Amy serves on the Faculty Advisory Board for the Harvard University Native American Program, helping HUNAP achieve is mission of teaching, research, outreach, and community support. Previously, she directed on the Harvard Project’s tribal governance awards program, Honoring Nations and was a research associate in the area of family strengthening. Amy was also a private consultant in the areas of team building and organizational leadership.
Amy is Brothertown Indian and Korean. She received her B.A. in Business Administration from University of Washington, M.A. in Organizational Leadership from Chapman University, and Ed.M. in Human Development and Psychology from the Harvard Graduate School of Education.
Contact:
Tel: (617) 496-1759
Fax: (617) 496-3900
Email: amy_besaw@post.harvard.edu
Jonathan Taylor is a research fellow at the Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development, and a senior policy scholar at the Udall Center for Studies in Public Policy at the University of Arizona.
Mr. Taylor has provided expertise to tribes and bands in the United States and Canada in the areas of strategic management and economic development. Mr. Taylor has worked in a wide variety of institutional and cultural contexts and on a wide variety of projects. These projects have included assessing changes in quality of life due to major enterprise success (including casino gaming), designing tax regimes, assisting in constitutional evaluation and reform, providing public policy analysis and negotiation support in the context of resource development, valuing non-market attributes of natural resources, and educating tribal executives. At present, he is studying the national evidence on the socioeconomic effects of Indian gaming on Indians and non-Indians. He has authored or supported testimony in litigation and in public hearings for a number of Native American groups needing economic analysis to support treaty rights or tribal policies.
Mr. Taylor holds an A.B. in politics from Princeton University (1986) and an M.P.P. from the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University (1992).
Contact :
Tel. (617) 480-2074
Email: jonathan@taylorpolicy.com
