Board Members
President -- Randy Akee, UCLA.
President-Elect -- Valentina Dimitrova-Grajzl, Virginia Military Institute.
Past President - Miriam Jorgensen, University of Arizona.
Secretary - Stefanie Schurer, University of Sydney.
Treasurer - Jonathan Taylor, The Taylor Policy Group.
Biographies of Board Members
President -- 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.
President-Elect -- 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.
Past 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.
Secretary -- Stefanie Schurer, Professor, University of Sydney.
Stefanie Schurer is a Professor of Economics in the School of Economics at the University of Sydney. She leads the Economics of Human Development research node at the Charles Perkins Centre and is a member of its Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health Theme Steering Committee. Stefanie is a specialist in linking large administrative data sources for children, which she uses to evaluate the consequences of Australia's key family, welfare, and medical policies, including the controversial Northern Territory Emergency Response. She also leads the Against-the-Odds study, an interdisciplinary and multi-institution research project that explores factors of exceptional wellbeing and performance among Indigenous youth. She is a Visiting Scholar at the University of Chicago, a Research Fellow at the IZA Bonn and a member of the Human Capital and Economic Opportunity (HCEO) network. She is on the editorial board of the Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization. The recipient of numerous fellowships and research grants, she obtained PhD and Masters degrees in Economics from the Ruhr Graduate School in Economics (Germany) and the University of York (UK), respectively.
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.