FOR URBAN NATIVES BY URBAN NATIVES

Sutton King, Nāēqtaw-Pianakiw, is the President and Executive Director of UIC and the Co-Founder of ShockTalk. She is Afro-Indigenous, and a descendant of the Menominee and Oneida Nations of Wisconsin. She currently resides in the Sutton King, MPH, Afro-Indigenous of the Menominee and Oneida Nation of Wisconsin. She is an Indigenous Health Advocate, Researcher and Social Entrepreneur dedicated to developing and scaling innovative solutions to improve Indigenous health equity across sectors. Her focuses center decolonial approaches and culturally appropriate methodologies within technology, healthcare and business. She supports research to increase the visibility surrounding Indigenous health outcomes and access to mental health care for Urban Natives through her roles as President and Executive Director of the Urban Indigenous Collective a grassroots organization dedicated the health and wellbeing of Urban Natives and Co-Founder of ShockTalk a telebehavioral application connecting Native users to Native therapists. She is the Chief Impact Officer for Journey Colab, a biotech company decolonizing their approach to drug development. In her role as Chief Impact Officer for Journey Colab she supports the design and implementation of a stakeholder model and ensures social impact through company accountability. 

Sutton@urbanindigenouscollective.org

Jarrad Packard is the Director of Strategic Partnerships for UIC. Jarrad is an enrolled member of the Yankton Sioux Tribe of South Dakota and is also Oglala Lakota from Pine Ridge, South Dakota. He is currently an MSW graduate student at Hunter College’s Silberman School of Social Work in New York City. He previously studied Heath Care Management and Policy and received a Bachelor of Science from Georgetown University in May 2008. Jarrad worked at the Indian Health Service headquarters in Rockville, MD from 2010 until 2018 in the Office of Management Services. In his time there, Jarrad served on several committees and was the President of the Employees Association where he enjoyed working with the employees and the DMV Urban Native community at large. Jarrad moved to New York City in March 2018 and served as a Case Manager for an Urban Indian Health Program servicing the largest population of Urban Natives in the country. He is excited to be attending school and to be a part of the UIC team serving Urban Natives in New York City and the surrounding area. 

Jarrad@urbanindigenouscollective.org

Logan Tootle is a member of the Cherokee Nation. She is currently a MSW student at Columbia University specializing in Social Enterprise Administration. Logan is completing her social work fieldwork with UIC as an MSW Associate. In addition to her studies, Logan is a Research Assistant for Dr. Brooke S. West who focuses on the sociostructural factors of substance use and HIV/STIs among womxn.

Logan recently relocated to New York City from Minneapolis/St. Paul where she workedat the Minnesota Indian Women’s Resource Center (MIWRC). Logan served in variouscapacities with MIWRC, including roles as an Organizational Strategist, Special Project Manager, and Safe Harbor Youth Worker. As a youth worker, Logan provided individual case management and culturally specific support groups to Native youth ages 24 and under who had experienced or were at risk of experiencing commercial sexual
exploitation. In addition to direct service, Logan facilitated a variety of training sessions about commercial sexual exploitation, historical trauma, and more to various stakeholders and community members.

Darby Galligher is a member of the Miami Tribe of Oklahoma. In May, she graduated with her BS in public health from Miami University (in Ohio). She is currently a graduate student at NYU’s College of Global Health, working towards her MPH with a concentration in Global Health. She is also interested in raising awareness about IHS and other opportunities that are available to indigenous peoples. Growing up, she experienced a disconnect from her tribe, and only after enrolling into Miami University and getting involved in the Myaamia community on campus, was she able to feel connected to the tribe. Prior to her senior year of college, she was unaware of IHS, and other health and wellness opportunities that were available to her as a tribal member. Her main goal of working in indigenous health is to increase awareness of those services to those who may not know about them, as well as making those services more readily available

Gianna Reza-Ortega is a Program Manager of Research + Advocacy at UIC, and a queer person with roots in the Chiricahua Apache tribe and Mexico. She is a recent graduate from Massachusetts Institute of Technology with bachelor’s degrees in Biology and Chemical Engineering, where she spent her undergraduate career planning and executing programming in both physical and virtual spaces to build community and raise voices of young adults from marginalized communities. Gianna is passionate about reproductive healthcare and healthcare access for marginalized communities, especially those affected by carceral systems. She previously worked as a Digital Organizer with the Frontline Election Defenders, directly managing a team of volunteers devoted to make the voting process accessible for everyone eligible to cast a vote as well as bringing language justice to the team by translating all public- and volunteer-facing documents to Spanish. As Program Manager at UIC, she designs ethical research programs that both build the evidence base for community-defined approaches to wellness and increase access to quality health and wellness services for Urban Indigenous folks in the so-called tri-state area. She looks forward to learning from and with the UIC team and communities while working to address their needs.

gianna@urbanindigenouscollective.org

Andrea Torres is a queer individual whose ancestry is of the Indigenous peoples of Colombia. In 2017 she graduated from SUNY Purchase with a BA in political science and minor in sociology. Her focus has been on environmental justice and its related health implications, with a more recent focus on food and land sovereignty for Indigenous people. Her previous research emphasized the importance of grassroots organizations that provide a platform to mitigate the health impacts faced by the financially and racially oppressed communities in the South Bronx. In May 2020 she graduated with a Master of Science in Environmental Policy and Sustainability Management from The New School, with a focus on food sovereignty, food justice, and decolonization. More recently she researched how the health needs of the Indigenous diaspora from South America, Central America & the Caribbean in NYC can be addressed by community organizations, health centers, and legal organizations.  This research has looked at the medical and social work field through a critical lens to understand how to meet the health and wellness needs of the Indigenous diaspora in culturally relevant ways. She has spent her time in school collaborating with her peers to carve out a space for Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) students who are seeking to find a place for discussions and healing around experiences with climate change, capitalism, white supremacy, anti-queerness, and all other forms of oppression. Her ultimate goal is to address climate justice in a holistic manner that centers decolonial approaches such as land rematriation, food justice, and BIPOC health and wellness as strategies for climate change mitigation. 

Tati is a Mvskoke Creek Nation citizen from Kansas and has a robust background working with immigrant communities and non-profits while having lived experience with issues surrounding hunger and poverty. Tati achieved a Bachelor's Degree in Cultural Anthropology with a minor in Philosophy in 2019. While in school, Tati worked at the International Support Services office offering basic immigration advice to international students while working at the Spencer Museum of Art as an assistant archivist and student administrative assistant. Tati also volunteered at the Watkins Museum of History in the archives and became involved in on-campus Indigenous student groups. 

Since graduation, Tati has been living in New York City and was an AmeriCorps VISTA fellow at the Queer Detainee Empowerment Project writing grants, fundraising, and doing various communications projects including writing the monthly newsletter and establishing the blog. Tati now works with Hunger Free America doing research and capacity building tasks and works with Urban Indigenous Collective writing grants, doing various communications projects, and helping out wherever else there is a need. In their spare time Tati likes to read, do photography, hiking, yoga, exploring the city, and expanding their record collection.