 Thank you so much for coming today. I know it's been a long day, and it's a long week, but we are thrilled that you're here. I'm going to get started on time because I know everyone has happy hours to get to after our session. So my name is Valerie Redhorse-Moll. I am of Cherokee Heritage, and I'm delighted to be able to present an amazing panel today of very accomplished women. We tried to get some men, but it just turned out the women were the movers and shakers. But I wanted to just start with a little bit of introduction on why we decided to do this panel and a little bit about the history of investing in Indian Country and some facts and figures, and then we'll get started with our esteemed panel that really represents kind of a different diverse sector from different areas in Indian Country. So I am currently the Executive Director of Investors Circle and Social Venture Network, which has nothing to do with Indian Country. We're one of the oldest social impact nonprofits, and that's what brings me to SOCAP. But prior to that, I spent 30 years as an investment banker, primarily facilitating the flow of capital and structuring capital into American Indian tribal nations. And in my career, my team and I facilitated about $3 billion of capital, but it wasn't easy. I have gray hair and scars, and I can tell you that it was just frustrating along the journey to see how many problems that we still face in Indian Country. And earlier this year, when I moved up from Southern California to Northern California, and I met a lot of wonderful people that have a heart for investing into indigenous communities, and I never knew these people, and they said to me, you know, there's this sort of mystique about American Indian tribes, and many funds that I continue to meet and foundations are very active in other countries with indigenous investments, and yet they're a little nervous about going into Wisconsin or New York or Arizona and New Mexico, and it doesn't make sense to me. But at the same time, what we're trying to do today is just, you know, open some of those doors, bring down some of those walls, let's talk about investing in Indian Country, the challenges, and also the benefit. So as, and I know some of you are American Indian in the audience, and some of you are very involved in this space, so this is a little repetitive. But I want to just start with some information to kind of frame our conversation. So there are about 562 what we call federally recognized tribal nations in the United States, and that's where they actually have a treaty between the government of the tribe and the federal government, and they're federally recognized. There's about another 200 that are state recognized, and there's a whole bunch, I don't know how many that are actually trying to apply for that recognition, that somehow they were terminated or overlooked. So in that relationship, their land, if you're federally recognized, is held in trust by the United States government, but it is considered sovereign land. So there are some obstacles if we're talking about lending or investing into Indian Country. When you have trust land, it's not really, you don't really have a real estate play. You can't put liens on the land, you can't make equity investments into the land. But over the years, a very developed market has been developed, and you're going to hear today from Heather, who is an American Indian Law Specialist among other things, and she can talk a little bit more about some of the ways the legal system has facilitated investments into Indian Country. I will tell you that one of the things I learned as an investment banker was there was this fear from the markets, from the capital markets about sovereign immunity, thinking that tribes could simply say, we're not going to pay you back and we're sovereign, and we can just kind of say no and you can't do anything to us, you can't sue us. And really the market has been able to get around that with limited waivers of sovereign immunity. There's very smart attorneys working in the space now, and the bottom line is we have a good relationship between capital and Indian tribes. However, that market was really created by gaming, and I think most of us are in this room to think about other ways for other areas of economic development besides gaming, and there's nothing wrong with gaming. And I think all of us sitting here who have worked with tribes can tell you that gambling and hospitality is the one industry that has really brought most of our tribes from absolute poverty into economic progress and the ability to move forward. That doesn't mean we're advocates and proponents of gaming. It doesn't mean we sit at the slot machines, but we do see the benefit. And so the benefit of having conversations like this is really looking at how do we go from here, knowing that we at least have some economic base, but trying to expand and looking at other ways and new opportunities. And so, again, I'm just so appreciative that you're here, and we definitely want to allow time at the end for questions because we have a long history, all of us, in working with underserved communities and in Indian country, but we want to hear your questions so we can hopefully get those relationships going, and really we want to see more interaction between social impact and American Indian communities within the U.S. borders. So with that, I'm going to start with the panel discussion, and I tried to arrange it today kind of from the youngest demographic, you know, moving into kind of more mature investments. And we're going to start at the end of the table with one of my best friends in the world, someone that I revere so much. And her name is Karla Knapp, and she is a Penobscot Indian originally from the state of Maine. And I met her many, many years ago, and she works tirelessly for the Boys and Girls Clubs in Indian country. And there's a specific division within Boys and Girls Clubs that focuses on our youth, and it is probably the hardest job that I've ever seen anyone do. And she doesn't like it when we focus on the negative because she focuses on the positive, but I feel that I have to give you a little bit of an idea that when you look at stats in America with unemployment, it's always so much worse on Indian reservations. So we often have 50 to 60 percent unemployment rates on reservations. And then when you look at where our kids come out in it, they're often unsupervised, there's substance abuse, there's cycles of poverty. The one thing that makes me really sad is we have some of the highest teenage suicide rates of anywhere in the country. And so what Karla's organization has been able to do, the Boys and Girls Club, and they actually have metrics that can show you their impact, they've been able to change that and really get mentorships going and the Boys and Girls Clubs support of the youth so that we're actually seeing the teenagers get back in school and engage into society and grow into the leaders we need them to be. Because if you're wondering like, okay, this is about investments, why am I talking about the Boys and Girls Clubs? In order to make really good investments work in Indian country, we need to have good leaders at the tribal level and these kids grow up to be those leaders and they have to be well-rounded, they have to be educated, they have to be well. And so what Karla works at every day is focusing on our kids and that is the most important job in my opinion and we're both mothers. So with that, I'd like to turn it over to Karla and have her tell you a little bit about what's going on with our youth in Indian country and then we'll keep going up the age scale from there. Is this on? Since we're a youth development program, I feel like I want to tell everybody in the room, can you come to the front of the room? I'm not going to make you move. I noticed everybody's in the back. But Willy Wonny, many thanks Valerie for having me here today. I feel very honored and privileged to be here today and to bring our youth voice to the forefront. For me, there's such hope and opportunity for them and for you to be able to join us today and hear some of the story of how that we've been able to make a difference in the lives of our native youth. I'm very honored. I'm the Vice President of Native Services for Boys and Girls Club of America and I have the honor and privilege of working with an amazing team. We call Native Services for Boys and Girls Club of America that provide technical assistance, direct support to all the tribes that we work with that have Boys and Girls Clubs on Native lands. You did hear Valerie talk about what it looks like for native youth and I do have a hard time talking about that. Our youth are more at risk than any other youth in this nation and the risk factors and those staggering statistics, I think that's what pushes our team to work hard every single day and I really believe in people and purpose and passion and that's what our team brings to Indian Country. Just to give you a snapshot of our footprint, we have nearly 200 Boys and Girls Clubs on Native lands in 28 states representing 114 federally recognized tribes as well as expanding into Alaska and Hawaii and even under our care we took in American Samoa because they need our support as well in culturally relevant services. I don't know if Jackie, she's a colleague of mine in the audience, passed out. I have this impact report that Valerie is referencing about what we do for Native services and I want to share with you that we actually have four different priority areas where our team focuses on these priorities that we believe are going to drive outcomes and build the capacity of every Boys and Girls Clubs on Native lands to effectively serve Native youth and I'm going to start with one of our priorities in its program quality and it's really making sure that the programs that we offer are going to drive outcomes and on this impact report you're going to see how we've taken some of the best Boys and Girls Club of America's programs and adapted them for Native youth whether it's around STEM, digital literacy, nutrition education or even resources around grief and loss and you'll see a list of many programs that we adapted even skills, masteries and resistance training knowing that there is a strong substance abuse issue on our Native lands and you'll see, I know Jackie's running to get those out really quick but you'll see some of the impact measures when we look at Native youth and we know only 68% graduate from high school 89% of our youth are saying they're getting A's and B's and they're expected to graduate on time, that's huge and knowing what Boys and Girls Clubs can do for our Native youth I'm so proud to be part of this movement our second priority is really to strengthen organizations and building their capabilities to be here not only for today but many years to come and so what our team does is we provide culturally relevant training whether it's around making sure that our CEOs of the clubs are learning about advanced philanthropy whether it's learning how to strategic plan to have a long-term vision for their program we also work directly with the direct frontline staff we call our youth development professionals making sure that they're equipped to really deliver effective programs that can drive those outcomes that you see on the sheet and our third priority is advocacy and that's around really elevating the voice of our Native youth but finding people that can advocate for the needs of Native youth you heard from Valerie she's one of our biggest champions in Indian Country that truly cares about our people our youth and knowing that we're studying our youth to become future leaders, gainfully employed productive in our communities or to society so our fourth strategy knowing the impact that we're making is really to grow our footprint there's a need and there's such an opportunity we've heard from Valerie the number of federally recognized tribes that we have and knowing how many that we're working with now the opportunity to grow our footprint is huge the opportunity is there but the need is there as well and I did have notes that I wanted to make sure I hit everything but I just want to say that I'm very honored to be here to advocate for Native youth in the work that we do in our boys and girls clubs and I know that there's others that you're going to hear from but I wanted an opportunity to speak again so I am going to pass this to Valerie so I have just over the years been so impressed with the Boys and Girls Club and one of the things that I think is so important is alongside all of their programming they do have the cultural programs and so at many of the conferences it's the young boys and girls that are doing the drumming and the dancing and teaching us their customs and their traditions which I think is awesome alongside all the other programs so now we're going to move as the youth get older and look at university level education and Carla listed some statistics that aren't pretty and they get even worse as we look at how many Native Americans actually get into colleges and often they're the first ones in their family to get a college education and yet we have Harvard and Stanford and University of Pennsylvania and we have a lot of good universities represented on this panel and yet we're kind of the exceptions to the rule and so when we look at the pipeline of tribal leaders and making a true investment into Indian country we can't ignore the start of it all at the college level which is really where in my opinion where the investment discussion starts where the entrepreneurial discussion starts and so I'm really thrilled to have Jennifer on our panel today Jennifer is the current director of the Center for the Comparative Study of Race and Ethnicity at Stanford and how I came to meet Jennifer is I'm a Stanford mom my oldest daughter graduated from Stanford in 2007 it changed her life she's now one of the few Native women in tech and she's taken two companies public and is currently head of marketing for a big tech company and she credits Stanford for helping her get to her career goals and then my youngest daughter is currently a student at Stanford she'll graduate in 2020 she's on their beach volleyball team so if you want to talk athletics and beach volleyball afterwards please come up and see me because I will talk all day about that but when I met Jennifer I basically said to her right now the problem I see with entrepreneurialism in Indian country is it's usually based on gaming or government programs government handouts and I want to see our Native entrepreneurs learn how to create businesses that stand alone like the rest of the world and the rest of the economy and Stanford I looked it up Stanford has fostered more entrepreneurs and businesses than any other entity in the world and Silicon Valley is known globally for that and Stanford has a Latino entrepreneurial program American entrepreneurial center they have all kinds of wonderful entrepreneurial centers and I was thinking that I was just going to get kind of a blank stare and I said why don't we have like a class focused on natives and entrepreneurial center for Native Americans and Jennifer looked at me and said okay let's do it and so she is absolutely amazing her resume is really too long to give you the full resume as with everyone up here but she's currently a professor at Stanford she's also the director as I mentioned for the Center for the Comparative Study of Race and Ethnicity she graduated with a BA from Vassar and then her graduate work was at University of Pennsylvania she's written two books related to culture studies and African American studies and she also taught at Duke University before coming to Stanford she's amazing and she's very supportive of our efforts and as I was telling her about all the things I thought we needed to do she really held me to my comments and said okay you're teaching a class in the spring so now I'm a professor or going to be at Stanford because she's really supportive of our community and I wanted her to talk today a little bit about how we see that supporting the future of investments into Indian Country with starting with the entrepreneurial support that Stanford can give Thank you so much Val and I'm just really truly honored to be on this dais with these amazing colleagues if I can even say that it's really very humbling I also want to say that I'm here in part as the 1% and what I mean by that is that there are over 2,000 faculty at Stanford and I'm one of 22 of the 2,200 faculty who identify as a black woman now we have even fewer Indian professors but we are honored as Val said to have over 200 Native American students on Stanford's campus and the statistic you quoted about having those students go on to found many many companies to have a real impact across the globe is impressive and they too are very diverse of those 200 I think we have over 80 of the 500 federally recognized tribes represented I'll be talking about one of them at the end of my remarks I just want to say that even though the number of Native American college students particularly at predominantly white institutions like Stanford is small it is in many ways growing and those students require support and I think that having an actual class which will be the first the one that Val is going to teach in the spring will be unique let me say a little bit more about this idea of connecting investors students and helping to generate startups at the center for comparative studies in race and ethnicity we seek to develop connections and in her book social startup success how the best nonprofits launch scale up and make a difference Kathleen Kelly Janis notes the hardest aspects of approaching relationships with donors which many young leaders don't have is the unwritten set of rules of playing the game and the ways in which many more experienced organizational leaders some of whom are actually on this panel can help develop those connections to create leverage in the field and I think that even though these students are in some ways already privileged there still is a huge cultural gap on both sides from the investors perspective and those of what the students need to learn to really make those it's not just putting people in the room and this leads me to how we proceed and maybe teaching the class that Val is going to do so part of that involves something called community engaged learning and this will pick up and I feel like my presentation follows very much on Carlos in the question of dealing with specifics around difference so it's not enough just to put people in the same room we really believe for deep engaged learning that we have to go to the res to see folks also in urban spaces bring them to Stanford that we have to take time to connect people it's not an easy process and beyond linguistic and other kinds of things we have to remember there's a culture of business and that some translating has to happen on all sides to bring people into the room and generate new kinds of startups and projects so our hope for the class that will involve this community engaged learning and we've gotten some money from UPS a grant to help foster this is that we would make those real connections and think too about the ethics of bringing people into the same room so that in order to do deep learning it involves not just theory or reading books but also truly meeting people where they are and making them understand one another on a more level playing field and I think that Stanford is a perfect place ironically right where we have the funds to be able to make those connections and we have students who've already proven themselves in that way I'll say the other thing that's really going to be very exciting about this class which I think is one of the first in the nation as in the United States not the many nations within but is that we offer we are the home of Native American studies at Stanford and have been since 1996 and we teach classes in education linguistics, feminist gender and sexuality studies technology and law but because we only have a graduate school of business undergraduates at Stanford don't even get to take classes that focus on entrepreneurship or business those are very rare so this is going to be unique in terms of the B school in terms of Native American studies and while it's geared towards Native students it's really open to everyone and I want to make a plea here for the value of investing across difference and in Indian country as the panel is titled because we can't think that it's only just helping our own in a narrative way I mean that's part of again the ethic of comparative studies in race and ethnicity and I'm just going to sorry I haven't been using this close with two examples of Native American entrepreneurship the first actually comes from the 19th century believe it or not in the same era as Leland Stanford was becoming a major capitalist in the United States there was a woman named Edmonia Lewis who was Ojipwe and Haitian and she became the first sculptor in the United States to make a living being a sculptor she had to go to Rome, Italy in order to do that but she did make a living although she wasn't able to have a factory or kind of a workshop like many other sculptors in the era because she couldn't afford it and I keep thinking about Edmonia Lewis even though she quote-unquote was a success when she wasn't meant to survive nevertheless could have had she had the proper investment most of her writings have to do with people not paying her for the work she did or that she had to carve things herself because she couldn't afford to pay others you know that that's an example then of someone even though who there are businesses in Indian country they're not scaled to the level that they could be if they had proper angel investors and investment the second comes from a recent graduate last year Matthew Yellowtail who's from the Crow Nation in Montana won the university prize he wrote a wonderful screenplay which we hope Netflix will pick up and it was inspired by a digital storytelling class he had from the generations project and he was really hoping to kind of portray his family in this hometown of Waiola, Montana and in it he includes a fictionalized version of his sister who also has a small business selling accessories again a wonderful investment opportunity so past and present there are wonderful examples of excellent work I'm giving you two from the cultural realm but I would say and you'll hear this from some of my colleagues on the panel you know we need investment in every way so gas stations infrastructure, health care all kinds of things but you know here are two examples I think of culture work that would have benefited from and I hope in maybe Matt's case will benefit from future investment thank you thank you Jennifer you know I recently did I'm also filmmaker I recently made a film on Wilma Mann Killer who was the first female elected principal chief of the Cherokee Nation and one of our greatest leaders of all time and she believed that you had to lead with education or your nation would not survive and so I just really appreciate all of the work that both Jennifer and Carla are doing with our youth now we're going to move a little more into the investment side actual investment side even though our kids are our investments and Heather Thompson has given me a tough job here she's an overachiever and I cannot possibly properly introduce her so I'm going to only do a short piece because you're going to love learning from her I learn from her every time I talk to her so Heather is nationally recognized as a Native American lawyer and leader in Indian country she's an economic development expert she's an enrolled member of the Cheyenne River Sioux Nation she is with the Indian law practice at Greenberg and is it Tara? and a principal now with Native American capital she's a specialist on tribal opportunity zones which is very interesting and very new it's called the tribal opportunity zone venture group and seven generations native indoor farms so she's also doing indoor farming on the Pine Ridge Reservation she's an author of the well read piece the competitive advantages of doing business with Native American tribal governments her resume is two more pages which I cannot point being she went to Harvard law and she is one of our most accomplished Indian lawyers and Indian women and I couldn't be more delighted to have her here with us today you're going to learn so much from Heather come on up does anybody in the room want to make money okay that's what I'm here to talk about I see a lot of familiar faces how many of you already work in Indian country in some capacity okay how many of you are on the investor okay not as much but that's what we're going to talk about so Teresa and I are going to really talk about the investor side and sort of demystifying this process and how do you make money in Indian country and as Val said it always drives me crazy we have so much investment in emerging markets and third world countries and we seem to think that you know that that is completely achievable and reducing that risk but somehow Indian country is just a completely foreign entity and overwhelms us every time we start to have that conversation so we're going to talk through some of that hopefully we can demystify it we can talk about some of the resources that are available and we're going to talk to you about how to make some money so while doing well as well I have clients that are paying 20 to 24% for their debt right now which is insane absolutely insane in this country but capital is so hard those are higher risk industries with the tribes but it is so hard to access capital and as Valerie said she's done it for so many years and she finally just can't do it anymore because it's exhausting it is absolutely exhausting because you're having the same conversation over and over again it's not that scary it's not that scary I promise right so that is what I do at Greenberg Trier because I helped demystify that risk we helped do the political analysis we helped do the legal analysis we helped put together creative collateral because as Val said the collateral is a little difficult with the land ownership issues but there are ways to make these deals happen there's way to protect yourself from sovereign immunity we do this all day every day and people are successful and they make money so please don't be so overwhelmed by this there's an entire there's a thousand Native American attorneys now that know this space that have done these deals through gaming now can replicate them in this field in this space so my first thing is why invest in Indian country there's money to be made I mean the philanthropic side is super important but in the long run we have to be able to sustain ourselves we cannot sustain our language programs our cultural programs our youth programs if we are not making our own money and if we don't have that economy so we need you to have faith in us and help us make money real money long term so that's number one why invest in Indian country two every investment is an impact investment and what do I mean by that tribal nations have no tax revenue to run their governments I want to say that one more time tribal nations have no tax revenue to run their governments so they have all the same obligations as the state of California the county the city they've got to have schools and roads and tax collection and they have no tax base if they have land that land is largely entrusted with the federal government is non taxable there's no income tax arguably and the states and the sales tax is a constant litigation battle with the state so effectively you can either get grants and run your government on grants or you can depend on the federal government for a handout neither of which sounds like a very good long term strategy for running your government so what do you do you participate in the private marketplace which is hard enough I mean can you imagine running the state of California by running a hotel and a grocery store and a gas station but that is exactly what tribal nations have to do so if I hear one more comment about casinos I'm going to scream and rip my hair out but that is participation in the private marketplace you have to go out and own a grocery store own a casino own whatever it takes to give you a margin significant enough to pay for those schools those cultural centers those language preservation programs and so while the Boys and Girls Club is about as sexy as a thing you can invest in so please go that direction while those programs are absolutely necessary we need a freaking gas station to pay for them long term because your five bucks is going to run out from the philanthropy side eventually and so people don't think of these investments as being that exciting but you have to help these tribes build that private economy and have these long term investments in things that are going to be able to sustain themselves as governments and as people so what we do is in the back the paper that Valerie referenced on the back table actually is this very short paper called the competitive advantages of doing business with Native American tribes and tribal corporations so it's not the easiest thing but it can be the best thing right because you're doing business with the tribal nation largely and guess who doesn't pay federal taxes so if you structure this correctly the portion of the business that's owned by the tribal nation doesn't pay any federal income taxes and can refeed into that business so you're going to be making more money long term that's just one example there's also a series of tax incentives that the federal government has put in place for taxable investors to try and attract that capital because it is so difficult to get the capital in the most recent one of course is the opportunity zone so have you guys like talked about this ad from I think right at Socap thus far so you know the basics of the opportunity zones but I'm here to tell you that 20 to 30 percent of those opportunity zones are in Indian country they're on Indian reservations and as Val said usually I'm on the legal side and I'm structuring these deals but at my large law firm what I'm seeing at Greenberg Troward is these giant funds coming in setting up investment parameters of 50 to 100 million dollars that is going solely into real estate and is not going in my opinion to the purpose of this statute and getting to these smaller businesses these grassroots projects so what I'm hoping that you guys here at Socap can help push people's limits on what they're thinking about and utilizing those opportunity zones because yes in Indian country we do have some of those larger infrastructure projects but really the majority of our projects are 2 to 5 million dollars they're an absolute sweet spot for some of these family offices for some of these foundations you have to be a little bit braver than the average investor you have to be a little bit more creative in the average investor and trust us that it's not so scary and we can help reduce your risk and increase your profit so if there's one thing that we have this other hand out in the back so like I said I don't normally get in on this side of it but I was watching all this money my friend just walked in and we've been talking about these opportunity zones but I'm watching all of this money leak out the door at Greenberg Trag to these large funds and none of it being targeted towards Indian country so on Tuesday my friends and I that are in the finance world we just started our own company in order to make those matchmaking between the investors and the opportunity zones in Indian country to make sure at least some of that is being diverted to these Indian country opportunity zones and most of these are going to be in your smaller range like I said that I think are really good matches for a lot of the investors in SoCAP so Valerie wanted me to give you some examples of projects and I think Teresa is going to go into some specific examples of where she's been as an investor as I said that tribes have to make money where they make money so anything you can think of that you're interested in investing in you can partner with a tribe and they will probably also be interested and you can structure it so that you can take best advantage of their tax incentives for investing with them and their non-taxable status we've got everything from one to two million dollars to I think my favorite project of the week is tribal owned corporation who has a trillion plus dollar project which is a substitute it's an indigenous designed substitute to the border wall it's a green design that takes the place of it and is an alternative to the Panama canal so that we don't get choked out of trade by China on the Panama canal and I said you know what that is just crazy enough to work and everybody they've showed it to thus far has been really well received so that just shows you the creativity when you put indigenous minds together renewable energy Rosebud Indian Reservation in South Dakota they are trying to build a totally self sustained community and I know Nick was building one on Pine Ridge as well they all have micro grid components to them to keep that self sustainability we also have a client of seven tribes seven Sioux Lakota tribes in South Dakota that have come together to build a utility scale wind project about 15 million dollars for the first tranche that they're trying to raise grassroots projects ones that are a really good nice cultural match people get excited about these they're great projects native indoor farms we have a huge movement in Indian country for sustainable local agriculture right self sufficiency when the United States was not winning the military war they destroyed our food economy they destroyed the buffalo they distributed food and made our peoples dependent upon the federal government for survival so there's a giant cultural movement already going for food sustainability the problem is it's largely grant based at this moment right and so how do we create that so it's sustainable so native indoor farms is all about leapfrogging building our own land that's another conversation but the best most arable lands on our reservations were given to non-native farmers so let's just skip that let's create our own indoor farms what's the tipping point what do we have to grow from a Michael greens or pharmaceutical greens standpoint ship that out make money on that make enough profit to pay back our investor and keep a certain percentage for a local grow for our local fruits and vegetables so that's working on that right now and that's intended to be scalable for each of these reservations find that magic point and then eventually when your investors are paid off shift that ratio so that you have a larger local self-sustaining grow of healthy foods another one which is a really nice cultural match I'm from the Cheyenne Resu or La Cota we have a very strong warrior culture and so we have a local grass roots company who is creating a for profit fire jumping a wildland fire company and the goal of that one is to make enough money when you're going out that it can help subsidize the local structural fire department because we don't have local fire departments because we have no tax base so they go out make money fighting fires here in California make enough profit to pay their own folks pay back the loan and then subsidize their local structure fire and then I've got another tribe that's so that one's about two to three million sorry I'm leaving it off the indoor farm is about three to six each farm 36 million each farm the native fire jumper company they're looking for about two to three million the next one is a tribally owned bison herd you've got a lot of tribes that are trying to work on prairie preservation to raise buffalo in a traditional manner and not no feedlots all grass fed all Ted turners are feedlotted sorry just so you guys know so this is more expensive buffalo but it's better for the environment so they're looking to expand 10 to 20 million dollar profitable project we have significantly more demand for buffalo than can be met there's anybody who's interested in investing in buffalo ranches buffalo much better for the environment in general than cattle we have a demand that significantly outstrips the current supply of buffalo in the United States that are able to meet that and then if you're just looking more for a good profit margin investments the three companies that the three industries that are in most demand in these large rural areas the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation is the size of Connecticut my reservations about the size of Connecticut they're extremely ruled they're never going to make a dime on gaming you know you've got to use what you've got so one a lot of people are going towards e-commerce so if you're interested in e-commerce and locating them in low tax areas any e-commerce idea you got you've got a partner in Indian Country that's interested in that number one two the less sexy investments but they have higher rates of return in these very rural areas because this is what people buy there's not that many different industries that people are going to spend their money on one gas stations the number one thing gas stations and sea sources are very remote areas got to have a gas station to get around where you're going they have good returns I don't know a single tribe that doesn't need a good gas station and these are all you know two three million dollar range fast food not the sexiest thing but not the healthiest thing but in great demand obviously open to healthier options subways really growing on a lot of reservations but some sort of healthy fast food chain desperately needed almost no food options in most of these rural reservation areas and then third farm supply stores a lot of tribes are looking to own farm supply stores and in-house that everybody's driving off reservations sometimes two three hours away in order to obtain these are good businesses with good profit margins to get sort of basic farm supplies and those are all sort of under depending upon obviously the size two to five million investments so those are not only concrete examples those are like actual clients that I work with that called me yesterday when they said Heather had an opportunity zone company that I have the contact information for I mean these are real investments these are real people these are real projects and they're really doable so if I can leave you with that this is completely achievable and good investment thank you I told you she was amazing one thing I would add to what Heather said so one of the most difficult deals I ever did as an investment banker in Indian Country was financing a local Denny's on the Navajo reservation and I got sort of the same reaction she's talking about I couldn't find an investor that is so unexciting but I finally took me two years I finally got the money and that Denny's owner is the largest employer now in that county so he's bringing economic development it was needed and now he's also mentoring other businesses as kind of an elder in the tribe so sometimes we have to get past the fact that okay Denny's is not necessarily sexy or healthy I don't think it's unhealthy but but you know what Heather's trying to point out what I'm trying to point out I think we're all saying is everything is impactful on an Indian reservation and sometimes just the jobs alone make a difference so I don't know how many people at Denny's can possibly employ but he's the largest employer in that county so anyhow thank you for that insight Heather and now we're going to round it out with Teresa Dunbar who is the impact investment analyst at Manchester Capital Management where she works closely with the SWIFT foundation implementing their 100% impact portfolio and she also has a resume that's too long for me to list everything these women are just so amazing she got her MBA from UC Davis and what I want to say about Teresa though I asked her to be on this panel because as Heather and I can attest to it so often we meet investors that just don't want to deal with everything we've talked about in Indian country but Teresa does she rolls up her sleeves and just dives right in she's made investments or her foundation or her clients have made investments she's recommended investments I met her with a group of potential investment funds and foundations and it was so funny because when I talked about the Denny's and the gas station the reaction from the others was what we would expect we wanted to do cultural programs we just wanted to do indigenous language programs Teresa got it she was like no I understand you have to invest in infrastructure and you have to think about those things so I invited her to be on the panel because she's someone that actually puts her money where her mouth is and she's just a great she's in the social impact space the other three or four of us are really coming from the outside so she's a real champion of Indian deals so welcome Teresa Dunbar thank you can this is on thank you Val and again I'm also very honored to be on this panel with everybody and this amazing team of women and actually I don't actually need to speak after Heather because she gave out all the information but actually before I start I just want to give a shout out to Edgar Villanueva I don't think he's actually in the room but his book Decolonizing Wealth I haven't read it yet but I'm so excited to start reading it as soon as I get over the hangover that is so cap so as Val mentioned I work at Manchester Capital Management I'm the impact investment analyst there we manage wealth for about 50 families I work with a subset of them that are interested in aligning their values and their investments within that subset I work in particular with the SWIFF foundation and what they do is they support projects for sustainable agriculture biological cultural diversity building resilient local economies and also investing in innovations in finance that are not extractive they do this by partnering with indigenous groups, Native American communities and local allies they work in the Canadian Pacific Northwest the United States predominantly in the Southwest and the Great Plains and then also in the Andes and Amazon regions and as Val mentioned they have a 100% impact investment portfolio which means I get to work with them across all asset classes and so within the space of trying to figure out how to do and how to get money into Indian country it's really a small portion of what I do so I do not claim to be an expert in any way I'm just here to help people and able to get these investments into great places and things that need to be invested in so from my perspective I'm coming from I sit behind a desk most of the time and I help people with money get money into places they want to get money into but also just to give you around the investments that I'm talking about are on the smaller side so maybe about $200,000, $500,000 dollar deals and when I think about Val asked me to talk about challenges and what I've seen and what I really think about is actually the journey and the opportunity that I've had for learning with the Swift Foundation and doing this for the past 8 to 10 years and really when I think about it one of the main things that I think a lot of philanthropic bodies deal with is how to balance respect for self-determination and being responsive to community-led and informed projects while finding investments that fit within their mission statements often those are at heads with one another and so one of the examples that I really wanted to talk about was an investment that we made into Thunder Valley Community Development Corporation who happened to be led by Nick Tilson at the time now he runs NDN and he's amazing if you haven't talked to him but what was interesting is that that investment in particular was for affordable housing and when I talk about the Swift Foundation I mentioned earlier they're really interested in more sustainable agriculture and building resilient economies and so when we were talking about the investment with the board one of them brought up say why are we looking at an affordable housing project why are we looking at giving loans for this and what ensued was an amazing conversation about really looking at not the what of an investment but the how of an investment which means it's not just when you're looking at it's not just an affordable housing project it's not just green agriculture it's not just whatever it is that people feel like investing in but it's the how that this investment came to be which is who's at the table that are making the decisions that this is an important thing that needs to happen in the community who are the voices that are being heard who are the decision makers who is going to benefit from these projects and how will the how will the money continue to circulate within the communities so with that kind of conversation we're just like hell yeah we're going to do this because we know the work that Nick and his team really put into figuring out what the community needed and it's not just affordable housing check out their website it's a bunch of other stuff amazing stuff that they're doing so that's one thing that I think is really needed in the philanthropic sector is really trying to hey let's get over ourselves in our mission statements and really listen to what the communities are talking about and the informedness that they already bring to the process the second one is a very when I think of the journey and I think of things that I've learned along the way it's really this is a very practical this is a very practical side of it as someone I'm an analyst I look at spreadsheets all day I sit behind a computer it's really boring compared to what all these ladies are doing and and I'm looking like but I look at pitch decks and stuff like that and so as an investor that sits in Santa Barbara California and not within communities and it's intimidating for a lot of people to figure out how to do investments in Indian Country you have a lot of things that I especially like I don't know about some of the stuff that's already been talked about land trust laws you have layers of tribal governments you have Bureau of Indian Affairs you have community mores and protocols that I understand that I would love to but I just I'm not there and then you have funding streams that are also in the region that work together you have HUD you have new market tax credits you have now you have opportunity zones and you don't know how that's going to be coming into play so what I basically was able to do is like I just came to grips that I couldn't know everything and what we ended up doing is finding amazing partners who are out there who already know how to do this stuff who know how to do it well and I think of some of the people that we've already worked with and some of you have already heard from them in particular is Crystal Cornelius of Oesta Dave Castillo from Native Capital Access Nick Tillson I'm going to call you out whenever I can but and these are just some examples of some of the people we have investments with we've also supported Native American natural foods also known as Tonka Bar and that was a direct equity and loan investment and also I mean in general an easy way to just to get involved is support your local tribal banks and also Native CDFIs so anyway I think I'm over time oh no but I think I'm over time anyway basically ask me if you have any questions is this on? yes it is okay so we are almost at the end but we definitely wanted to leave room for questions we hope you may have some because we've given you an awful lot of information we've got one right there speak loudly what's your name and where are you from first? hi I'm Jill Lipski-Cain and I'm an evaluator and I'm from Minneapolis Minnesota if you can't tell from my accent I'm yeah so I am really interested in not only impact measurement that measurement and evaluation is really my bread and butter and me and a few other colleagues at our consulting firm are really interested in impact investment measurement but I'm also interested in investing and there was a mention of small investment packages but where you said it to like 200k and I'm like wow what are investment opportunities for those who want to start getting investing to build wealth but don't have a whole lot to start with great question avoiding like just like donating online and but actually wanting to turn around on profit and addressing these significant inequities in our country that is a great question and I'm going to take it but I actually haven't talked too much about what I really do now for my day job I left Indian country because I wanted to make a bigger difference a bigger impact I was frustrated and I am now the Executive Director of Investors Circle and Social Venture Network and we are one of the oldest non-profits in the social impact space and what we do is we support early stage angel investors who really need to learn about investing and match them with entrepreneurs and social impact companies and because just by chance because I'm Native American I'm now bringing more native projects so some of the projects she's mentioned are now on our platform in our pitch sessions you can see them on our guest and then we have so many investors like yourself who maybe they want to start with 10,000, 20,000 but we pull the capital and we do it all as a non-profit so we're not a fund, we're not charging fees we're doing it from an educational standpoint and that's across all sectors but it's exciting because I am able to now start putting more native projects into that I think Crystal's CDFI is going to be a part of our entrepreneurial services so it's just really an exciting time and I would suggest that you talk to me afterwards I don't want to take up too much time here but there really is no amount that's too small to get started in impact investing and the one thing that we're focused on at the end is we don't believe you have to give up profit for purpose and we try to support that and we have fostered companies like Ben and Jerry and Eileen Fisher that are now really big publicly traded companies but they started small with small investments and so just talk to me afterwards but that it's absolutely possible and doable well then as we wrap it up I want to leave you I'm going to ask each panelist to say one last thing that I wanted to throw at them is if they had to ask for all of you sitting here if they had a request for the room what would that be and I'm going to start with Carla this time I'm going to make sure my ask is correct so going back to what I spoke too early my ask would be in efforts to steward our native youth to become future leaders gainfully employed in thriving community members my ask is to support our growth strategy as the need is great while supporting long term sustainability our success will be predicated on continued focus on partnering with new and current champions of Indian Country all across the nation our native youth deserve nothing less so there's my ask I guess I would echo some of my colleagues here on the panel and say that learning how is not something that shouldn't be daunting and invest in education but also move beyond one's comfort zone and root for stanford my ask is that you would introduce yourself to our entity it's ic-svn.org because we again are a non-profit and we would love to match interest with ask in terms of investors and companies needing money we're known as oldest matchmaker in the space so we'd love to learn about either side of the equation my ask is that if you're on the investor side that within the next two years you make an investment of some sort in Indian Country and if you're not on the investor side that you convince somebody on the investor side within the next two years to make an investment in a project that's a good one I would say sometimes what I hear out there is that there's not people don't know of any investable opportunities in Indian Country and I want you to all remember that that's a bunch of crap and so it's a financial term and what I would like to say is in general just as an example just a couple months ago and I was only there for three days and within that span there are so many investable avenues for people to get involved in I met three small business owners actively fundraising for capital OXDX Spirit Mountain Roasting, DNA, jewelry I met two Native American business incubators three of the women are here right now Tuba City Project in the New Mexico Community College Native Entrepreneurs and Residents Program and Business Space Development Project Terraform Development I met one large multi-million renewable energy project Navajo Power and this is just three days seriously I met a small scale panel project called Native Renewables that's trying to get electricity to the last remaining 1,500 families on Navajo Reservation that don't have electricity two regional Native CDFIs and one young Native American farmer who's reintroducing traditional seeds and crops while mentoring at risk youth so again that was three days and that was only three of the 753 federally and state recognized nations so get out there so I just want to say that in the Cherokee language we use the word Godugi which means working for the good of one another in community and so I would wish you Godugi as you continue with your so-kept journey but please do come up and follow us we just thank you for your time today God bless you