2008 INDIAN DISPUTE RESOLUTION SERVICES
BOARD OF DIRECTORS

GERALD SHERMAN (OGLALA LAKOTA)
CHAIRPERSON
Banker and Economic Development Specialist
Indian Land Company

Gerald Sherman, an Oglala Lakota, was raised on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. He is perhaps best known as the founder of the Lakota Fund, the first community development loan fund on the Pine Ridge Reservation and one of the first micro-enterprise loan funds in the U.S. Currently, Gerald serves as President and CEO of the Indian Land Capital Company, a national lending company that finances tribal governments to purchase alienated lands and fractionated ownership interests in trust lands.

After leaving the Lakota Fund in 1990, Gerald began his banking career with Norwest Bank (now Wells Fargo Bank) where he worked as manager of a bank on the Lower Brule Reservation in South Dakota. He has also since worked for the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis and First Interstate BancSystem of Montana. Upon leaving banking, Gerald became the Program Officer for the Four Times Foundation, a foundation that provided equity capital to Indian entrepreneurs on select Indian reservations.

Gerald Sherman is a member of the International Advisory Council of the Native Nations Institute (NNI) of the Udall Center at the University of Arizona, Tucson. NNI is affiliated with the Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development, and provides training and consulting services to Indian Nations in executive leadership with a focus on “nation building.” He received his bachelor’s degree in business from Oglala Lakota College.

Gerald lives on the Lazy E-L Ranch near Roscoe, Montana with his wife Jael and son Luke.

 

Carmen Lopez (Navajo)
Vice Chairperson
Executive Director
Native American Program
Harvard University

Ms. Lopez is the Executive Director of the Harvard Native American Program.  She is from the Forest Lake area of Black Mesa on the Navajo reservation in Arizona.  In her efforts to build a vibrant intellectual community committed to native American Studies at Harvard, Ms Lopez oversees the operation of the University-wide Interfaculty Initiative including interdisciplinary research projects, Native American studies, executive and professional development programs for Native leaders, event programming and support services to native students.  Prior to her current appointment at HUNAP, Ms. Lopez served on the faculty of Cushing Academy and the Native American Preparatory School where she taught government and history.  She received her B.A. in History modified with Native American Studies from Dartmouth College (1997) and her Masters in Education from the Harvard Graduate School of Education (2000) 

Andrew Jonas Lee (Seneca)
TREASURER
Vice-Chairperson, Public Policy
Aetna

Andrew Lee is director of research and policy analysis at Aetna, one of the nation’s leading providers of health, group, life, disability, and long-term care insurance.  From 1998 to 2005, Mr. Lee served as executive director of the Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government.  From 1996 to 1998, Mr. Lee worked in the Governance and Civil Society unit of the Ford Foundation.

Mr. Lee serves on a number of national boards, including the board of trustees of the Nathan Cummings Foundation, the board of directors of the Smithsonian’s Heye Center of the National Museum of the American Indian, and the board of governors of Harvard’s Honoring Nations tribal governance awards program.  He also serves on the tribal policy board for the Institute for Tribal Government at Portland State University, the advisory council of the National Congress of American Indians’ Policy Research Center, and was a member of the 2005 national selection committee for the “Leadership for a Changing World” awards program.

Mr. Lee was born and raised in Connecticut and his extended family resides on the Seneca Nation’s Cattaraugus Indian Reservation in western New York.  He received his undergraduate degree from Hamilton College and a master degree in public policy from Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, where he was a Christian A. Johnson Native American fellow and a Woodrow Wilson fellow in public policy and international affairs.

 

Mary Trimble Norris (Oglala Lakota)
SECRETARY
Executive Director
American Indian Child Resource Center

Mary currently serves as the Executive Director of the American Indian Child Resource Center in Oakland California.  AICRC is a major developer and provider and trainer of Indian foster care parents for American Indian children in the San Francisco Bay Area, and is a strong advocate for compliance with the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) by local and state social service agencies. Mary served for many years as the Deputy Director of California Indian Legal Services.

 

SARAH L. HICKS (ALUTIIQ)
MEMBER-AT-LARGE
Director of Policy Research Center
National Congress of American Indians

Sarah Hicks has served as the Director of the Policy Research Center at the National Congress of American Indians in Washington D.C since June 2004. There she directs and oversees a growing number of cutting edge social research studies on the conditions of American Indian and Native Alaskan communities that have direct implications for tribal and federal policy initiatives being advanced by Indian communities. Prior to becoming the Policy Research Center Director, Sarah served for five years as the Director of NCAI’s Welfare Reform Program.

Sarah is currently completing her Ph.D. at the George Warren Brown School of Social Work at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. She already has an impressive background in teaching and social research.
She has published extensively on a wide variety of policies, programs and practices affecting the wellbeing of Indian and Native Alaskan people, their families and their communities. Sarah has a particular interest in intergovernmental relations between Native communities and county, state and federal agencies with an aim to increase the effectiveness of these relationships in the interest of strengthening the resilience of Native communities and improving the health and wellbeing of their people and their families.

Sarah is Alutiiq, and is an enrolled member of the Native Village of Ouzinkie, Alaska.

 

William Lomax (Gitxsan Native)
member-at-large
President
Native American Finance Officers Association

Bill has worked with tribes for most of his career and joined Merrill Lynch to participate in the Native American Banking and Financial Services Group.  Prior to joining Merrill Lynch, Bill worked with Native American communities as a mediator/facilitator of land claim negotiations with the British Columbia Treaty Commission in Vancouver, Canada.  It was while working with the BC Treaty Commission that Bill realized the significant need for Native Americans in the investment and finance fields.  This realization propelled him to move to New York to pursue an MBA in finance.  Bill has also worked as an attorney for the Canadian Department of Justice and with Smith Barney as a Financial Consultant.   

In addition to serving as a IDRS Board Member, Bill serves on the Board of Directors of the Native American Finance Officers Association and is active in promoting financial education for Native Americans.  Bill was also featured as one of “Seven Native American Standouts” by USA Weekend during the opening of the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, DC.  Bill is a graduate of the University of British Columbia Law School and the Columbia University Graduate School of Business where he was a Toigo Fellow.

Marilyn Majel (pauma-luiseño)
MEMBER-AT-LARGE
Director of CASA
Intertribal Court of Southern Californiaaumarez@sbcglobal.net

Marilyn currently serves as the CASA Director of the Intertribal Court of Southern California. Past work experience includes working nine years as the Tribal Operations Specialist with the Bureau of Indian Affairs, where she maintained trust accounts for 33 tribes in southern California. Serves on Board of Directors for Indian Child and Family Services, and the California Indian Manpower Consortium, Native American Work Enforcement Council, Active in Fundraising Committee for the Friends of California Indian Legal Services, and former Alternate to the CILS Board. Previously, Tribal Council member for the Pauma Band of Mission Indians, and served as Secretary/Treasurer and Vice-Chairperson. 

CHARLES F. SAMS III (COCOPAH/CAYUSE/YANKTON)
MEMBER-AT-LARGE
Director, Tribal & Native Lands Program
Trust for Public Land

Charles Sams has an extensive background working to protect, conserve and enhance this nation’s endangered environmental resources. He currently serves as the National Director of the Tribal & Native Lands Program operated by the Trust for Public Lands. He works with native communities throughout the United States to reacquire and restore the health of their ancestral lands, and to help create native land bases that can serve as the foundation for greater economic self-sufficiency.

Prior to working for the Trust for Public Land, Charles served as the Executive Director of the Columbia Slough Watershed Council whose mission is to foster actions that promise to protect, enhance, restore and revitalize watersheds, wet lands, wildlife species, streams and lakes located on the southern flood plain of the Columbia River.
In the past, Charles served as the Executive Director of the Community Energy Project, and as the Executive Director of Earth Conservation Corps. In both positions, Charles led and supported the efforts of citizens, working together with a range of public and private organizations and agencies, to conserve and restore critical environmental resources.

Charles is a member of the Cocopah Nation of Southwest Arizona with blood ties to the Cayuse, Yankton Sioux. From
1988 to 1995, he served this country as an Intelligence Specialist with the United States Navy.

Copyright Indian Dispute Resolution Services 2006

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