I Native American STEM Star Creates Opportunity for Native American Emerging STEM Leaders: Meet Sarah EchoHawk, Inclusive Leader Award winner for Leadership & Equity

We continue to profile the 2022 Inclusive Leader Award winners who will be honored at the opening dinner of GlobalMindED 2022 on June 22. Many will be given this year’s awards by the 2020 and 2021 recipients. Some of these luminaries will be part of the GlobalMindED 2022 conference on June 23-24. You can see the entire program and register below for the dinner and/or the conference. Join us!

Today's feature story of the series of fifteen winners is from the Leadership & Equity category:

Sarah Echohawk, Chief Executive Officer

American Indian Science and Engineering Society

Congratulations Sarah EchoHawk, CEO of AISES

Inclusive Leader Award Winner for Leadership & Equity

Our award winner Sarah EchoHawk is a citizen of the Pawnee Nation of Oklahoma. Since 2013 she has served as the CEO of American Indian Science and Engineering Society (AISES), a company working to advance Indigenous people in STEM. For over 20 years Ms. EchoHawk has been working on behalf of Indigenous people. Since its inception, AISES has awarded over $11 million in scholarship support to American Indian STEM students.

Prior to joining AISES, Ms. EchoHawk was the Executive Vice President of First Nations Development Institute, a national nonprofit organization with a focus on economic development for Indigenous people. Ms. EchoHawk also served as the interim CEO for the organization’s subsidiary, First Nations Oweesta Corporation, a community development financial institution (CDFI), during its management transition in 2010. Before joining First Nations Development Institute, Ms. EchoHawk spent several years working for the American Indian College Fund raising support for tribal colleges and universities. During her tenure there, she served in many areas including operations, program management, communications, foundation relations, and individual giving. Ms. EchoHawk was an adjunct professor of Native American Studies at Metro State University of Denver for nine years where in addition to teaching introductory Native American studies courses, she also taught Native American Politics and co-taught Native Americans and Law with her father, John Echohawk, who co-founded the Native American Rights Fund (NARF) in 1970.

Ms. EchoHawk serves/has served on several boards and committees for multiple organizations and initiatives including the American Indian Policy Institute, Last Mile Education Fund, National Girls Collaborative, Native Americans in Philanthropy, Native Ways Federation, Red Feather Development Group, and Women of Color in Computing Research. She is also a member of the ad hoc committee at the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine for a project addressing the underrepresentation of women of color in tech and serves as PI/Co-PI on multiple National Science Foundation (NSF) grant funded projects. Previously, she served as an Ambassador for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Minorities in Energy Initiative.

Through these various boards, Ms. EchoHawk has been able to increase visibility of Indigenous populations. This is one of the biggest challenges for the Indigenous community, so Ms. EchoHawk encourages allies and Indigenous people to continue striving to serve on boards where recognition can be brought to their communities.

Ms. EchoHawk is a strong advocate for Indigenous people and constantly seeking for ways to increase Indigenous voices at all tables. As Ms. EchoHawk said in an interview with Karen Horting, Executive Director and CEO of the Society of Women Engineers, that “strength is in numbers” and it is “easy for us to be overlooked” due to the small size of certain Indigenous populations, and for this reason allyship is extremely important. If you are interested in finding avenues to support Indigenous communities and be an ally, check out the AISES website. There you can become a member, contact someone for more information, or even set-up your own chapter to support Indigenous peoples in STEM.

You can meet Sarah at the Inclusive Leader Award dinner June 22nd, and at this panel discussion: