Board Members
President - Jeffrey Burnette, Rochester Institute of Technology
President Elect - Robert Maxim, Brookings
Past President - Valentina Dimitrova-Grajzl, Virginia Military Institute.
Wizipan Little Elk Garriott, NDN Collective
Treasurer - Jonathan Taylor, The Taylor Policy Group.
Biographies of Board Members
President - Jeffrey Burnett, Rochester Institute of Technology
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.
President Elect - Robert Maxim, Brookings
Robert Maxim (Mashpee Wampanoag) leads Brookings Metro’s work on Tribal economies. Maxim’s research has focused on an array of different research and policy issues in Indian Country. On Tribal economies, Maxim has written about the impact of federal investments and federal funding cuts on Tribal communities; the need to reform federal funding for Tribal nations; Native workers’ ability to access to remote work; the role of Native American community development financial institutions in Tribal economic development; the exclusion of Native Americans from economic data; and how state and regional policy can improve data about Tribal nations, citizens, and communities.
Maxim has also researched and written on Native American education, including policy responses to remedy the lingering impacts of federal Indian boarding schools on Tribal communities, ideas for improving federal higher education data about Native American students, and policy proposals to support Native students and Native American-serving higher education institutions. His work on identity in Indian Country has explored how federal data misrepresent Native American identity. Within Brookings, he has led efforts to resurface the Institution’s historic engagement in Tribal communities, including the Meriam Report, and engage with Native-led organizations on enabling future research centering Native American people.
Past 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.
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.