Board Members
President - Valentina Dimitrova-Grajzl, Virginia Military Institute.
President Elect - Jeffrey Burnette, Rochester Institute of Technology
Past President -- Randy Akee, UCLA.
Secretary - Stefanie Schurer, University of Sydney.
Treasurer - Jonathan Taylor, The Taylor Policy Group.
Biographies of Board Members
President - 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.
President Elect - Jeffrey Burnett
Jeffrey Burnette is associate professor and chair of the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Rochester Institute of Technology. His research explores the relationship between education, economic stratification and the quantification of American Indian and Alaska Native identity. A primary focus of his work concerns representation in federal datasets and issues related to data disaggregation. He received his Ph.D. in economics from the State University of New York University (SUNY) at Buffalo in 2005 and a Bachelor of Arts in economics from the SUNY at Albany.
Past 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.
Wizipan (Wee-zee-pan) Little Elk Garriott, President of the NDN Collective
Wizipan (Wee-zee-pan) Little Elk Garriott is an enrolled member of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe in South Dakota. Since 2021, he has served as the Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary – Indian Affairs in the U.S. Department of the Interior. In this role, he served as the first assistant and principal advisor to the Assistant Secretary – Indian Affairs, in the development and interpretation of policies affecting Indian Affairs bureaus, offices, and programs. Before his appointment in the U.S. Department of the Interior, Mr. Garriott served as chief executive officer from 2012 to 2021 of the Rosebud Economic Development Corporation, an ecosystem of Tribal organizations serving the Rosebud Indian Reservation. In this capacity, Mr. Garriott led and started businesses and community-based programs, including a Native language immersion school and a 1,500-head buffalo herd.
Mr. Garriott was born and raised on the Rosebud Indian Reservation, where he attended St. Francis Indian School, a Bureau of Indian Affairs (now Bureau of Indian Education) facility. He has a Bachelor of Arts degree in American Studies from Yale University. Mr. Garriott received his Juris Doctor degree in 2008 from the University of Arizona’s James E. Rogers College.
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.