Loren Kieve (Cherokee) practices law in San Francisco. He is listed in The Best Lawyers in America and, for the fifteenth year in a row, as one of the top “Super Lawyers” in the Bay Area. Kieve is a member of the American Bar Association House of Delegates and has held ABA leadership positions since 1987. He is a director and past co-chair of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights of the Bay Area, and serves on the Board of Trustees of the national Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights. He previously was on the Board of Trustees of the State Bar of California. He attended Stanford and has law degrees from Oxford University and the University of New Mexico.

Ann Marie Downes (Winnebago Tribe of Nebraska) served in the U.S. Department of the Interior’s assistant secretary’s office of the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA). She is the former executive director of the Indian Legal Program at the Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law at Arizona State University, and a licensed attorney in California. She earned her JD from the ASU College of Law in 1994.

Barbara Jeanne Ells is a patron of the arts, with specific interest in the arts and crafts of the Southwest and of Native American cultures. Ells established and taught at multiple Head Start pre-schools, and helped found and staff a safe house for abused women and children in Terre Haute, Indiana, including a day-care center. She was first appointed to the Board of Trustees of the IAIA in 2011. Ells has a BS from Wheelock College.

Brenda Kingery was raised in Oklahoma and is of Chickasaw and Anglo descent. Kingery is a contemporary artist and refers to her experiences living and working in Okinawa, Japan, Uganda, Africa, and Powwow’s of Oklahoma. Additional to her international exhibitions and representation, Kingery teaches textile and design workshops, encouraging women in Honduras, Mexico, and Uganda.

Kingery’s holds a MFA from University of Oklahoma, and has completed post graduate studies at the University of Okinawa, Japan, Texas Tech University in Lubbock, Texas.

Kingery was appointed by the President of the United States to the Board of Trustees of IAIA in 2007, and in 2017 was named and celebrated as the Dynamic Woman of the Year by the Chickasaw Nation for her service as a role model and for her significant contributions to the Nation.

Dr. C. Matthew Snipp (Oklahoma Cherokee/Choctaw) is the Burnet C. and Mildred Finley Wohlford Professor of Humanities and Sciences at Stanford University and the Director of the Institute for Research in the Social Sciences’ Secure Data Center. Dr. Snipp received an MS and PhD from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Beverly Morris (Aleut) is producer, director, and owner of Chain Reaction Productions. She has been associated with the IAIA since 1988 as a student, staff member, producer, and director. Morris received her BFA from Stephen F. Austin State.

JoAnn Balzer is a Santa Fe, New Mexico community leader with more than twenty years of nonprofit management, museum, and fund-raising experience. She attended Westminster College in New Wilmington, PA, and after graduating magna cum laude with a BS in 1963, she was awarded a mathematics fellowship from Carnegie Mellon University, where she received an MS in 1965. After moving to Santa Fe in 1991, she was in great demand for her fundraising and management skills. In 2010, she was appointed by President Barack Obama and confirmed by the United States Senate as a Trustee at IAIA. She received an Honorary Doctorate in 2015, from her undergraduate alma mater, Westminster College in New Wilmington, PA. Her innumerable contributions to the arts and nonprofit organizations in Santa Fe included the establishment of two Museums in Santa Fe—the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts and the Museum of Spanish Colonial Arts. She also helped found the Institute of American Indian Arts Foundation, the Code of the West Foundation, and the Center for Cowboy Ethics and Leadership. In 2003, she was appointed by Governor Bill Richardson to serve as President of the New Mexico Film Museum and in 2009 appointed as a Commissioner of New Mexico Arts, the state arts agency.

Charles Galbraith (Navajo Nation) is a member of Kilpatrick Townsend and Stockton LLP in Washington, DC, focusing his practice on litigation and Native American Affairs. Prior to joining the firm, Galbraith was the White House Associate Director of Intergovernmental Affairs and Public Engagement, where he managed the relationship of the White House with 566 Tribal Governments and Native American people.

Lawrence Roberts (Oneida Nation) was appointed by President Obama to the Department of the Interior, Office of the Assistant Secretary, Indian Affairs in 2012, and ended his service on January 20, 2017. Roberts managed the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the Bureau of Indian Education and numerous offices that report to the Assistant Secretary’s Office. He worked closely with Tribes, other federal agencies, and the White House Council on Native American Affairs to foster tribal self-determination. Roberts graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1992 with a double major in Political Science and Sociology and from the University of Wisconsin Law School in 1995.

Dr. Robert Martin became President of the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA) on July 1, 2007. He has led the development of a comprehensive strategic plan and a campus facilities master plan resulting in academic program expansion, growth in student enrollment, construction of five new buildings on campus and the launch of a successful capital campaign. Prior to joining the IAIA community, Dr. Martin was the Associate Head for the American Indian Studies program at the University of Arizona. He also served as President of Southwestern Indian Polytechnic Institute in Albuquerque for eight years and president of Haskell Indian Nations University for ten years. Under his guidance, Haskell made the transition from junior college to a university offering baccalaureate programs. In addition, he served as the President of Tohono O’odham Community College (TOCC) in Sells, Arizona. During his tenure, TOCC achieved accreditation by the Higher Learning Commission and was designated as a 1994 Land Grant Institution by the U.S. Congress.

Dr. Martin is an enrolled member of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma and received his Doctorate in Educational Leadership from the University of Kansas and his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Appalachian State University.

He currently serves on the boards of American Indian Higher Education Consortium, Lensic Performing Arts Center and the Higher Learning Commission—a regional accreditor for colleges and universities. Dr. Martin was awarded the Liberty Bell Award by the Douglas County (Kansas) Bar Association, bestowed on Law Day USA to recognize individual contributions to human rights. He also was awarded an honorary doctorate from Baker University and in 2010 he received the Tribal College President of the Year Award.