Advisory Council

Member - Joseph Kalt, Harvard University.

Member - Ronald Trosper, University of Arizona.

Member - Dara Kelley, Simon Fraser University.

Member - Karen Diver, University of Arizona.

Member - Larry Chavis, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill.

Biographies of Advisory Council Members

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 -- Dara Kelly, Assistant Professor, Simon Fraser University.

Dr Dara Kelly is from the Leq’á:mel First Nation, part of the Stó:lō Coast Salish. She is an Assistant Professor of Indigenous Business at the Beedie School of Business, SFU in Vancouver, Canada. She teaches in the Executive MBA in Indigenous Business and Leadership program, and on Indigenous business environments within full-time and part-time MBA programs.

Dr Kelly is a recipient of the 2020 Early in Career Award for CUFA BC Distinguished Academic Awards. Her research helps fill in gaps in the literature on the economic concepts and practices of the Coast Salish and other Indigenous nations. Dr Kelly conducts research using research methodology emerging from Coast Salish philosophy, protocols and worldview. A paper stemming from her thesis won the Best Paper in Sustainability Award at the Sustainability, Ethics and Entrepreneurship (SEE) Conference in Puerto Rico in February 2017. She has presented in numerous conferences and public spaces in an effort to challenge conventional economical practices and inform positive change by drawing on knowledge of Indigenous economics. She is Co-Chair of the Indigenous Caucus at the Academy of Management and serves on the board of the Association for Economic Research of Indigenous Peoples. 

Member - Karen Diver, Director, Business Development, Native American Initiatives, University of Arizona.

Karen Diver is currently serving as the Director, Business Development, Native American Initiatives at the University of Arizona, which is a joint appointment between the Udall Center for Studies in Public Policy Native Nations Institute and the James E. Rogers College of Law Indigenous Peoples Law and Policy Program.

Prior to her current position, she served as the inaugural Faculty Fellow for Inclusive Excellence for Native American Affairs at the College of St. Scholastica in Duluth, Minnesota. 

She was an appointee of President Obama as the Special Assistant to the President for Native American Affairs. As part of the Domestic Policy Council, Ms. Diver assisted with inter-agency efforts, policy and regulatory changes to benefit 567 Native American Tribes. Karen served in this position from November 2015 until the end of the Administration. 

Karen served as Chairwoman of the Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa from 2007 -2015. This position is elected and serves as chair of the tribal government and CEO of the reservation’s corporate boards. The Fond du Lac Reservation is the 2nd largest employer in northern Minnesota with over 2,200 employees. She served as Vice-President of the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe (MCT), comprised of six members Bands, and chaired its Finance Corporation. 

She is currently on the boards of Harvard’s Honoring Nations and American Rivers. 

She has a Bachelors in Economics from the University of Minnesota, Duluth, and as a 2002 Bush Leadership Fellow, she received a Masters in Public Administration from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. 

Member -- Larry Chavis, Associate Professor, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill

Larry Chavis is an economist and business school professor from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill who will be spending the 2021-22 academic year at the University of Denver as an American Council on Education Fellow. Broadly, he is interested in mental health, race, and inequality as he sees these as core topics in higher education.

 Larry just completed three years as Director of the UNC American Indian Center, and his work with the Center transformed the focus of his career.  For his efforts in giving voice to Native peoples, Larry was recently awarded eagle feathers by both the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina (of which he is a member) and the Coharie Tribe.  Earlier this year, Larry was inducted into the Order of the Golden Fleece, UNC’s oldest and highest honor society, for his efforts to foster diversity and inclusion on campus.  Larry considers these honors the most meaningful of his career, and they fortify his goal of creating belonging for all in academic institutions.

 Dr. Chavis has been recognized for his passion for engaging students with teaching awards in the Executive MBA and Undergraduate Business programs. The dream of teaching is why he spent 11 years in graduate school, and he will maintain time in the classroom as he moves to a career in academic administration. He shares stories of grappling with anxiety and adult ADHD with his students in hopes of inspiring them to better understand their own strengths and weaknesses.

 His research focuses on institutions in developing countries and has appeared in the International Journal of Cultural Policy, Journal of Comparative Economics, World Bank Economic Review, Journal of Development Economics, and Quantitative Marketing and Economics.

 Larry and his wife Ruth have three children ages 28, 20, and 16. He received his Ph.D. in economics from the Stanford Graduate School of Business, his M.S. in applied economics and management and M.A. in Asian studies from Cornell University, and his B.A. in anthropology from Duke University.