Assets and Opportunities:
Growing Wealth, Reducing Poverty and Achieving Equity in Rural America
May 30th – June 1st, 2006
Biographies
Elouise C. Cobell
Michael Sherraden
David Dodson
Karl Stauber
Elouise Cobell
Elouise Cobell is the Executive Director of the Native American Community Development Corporation a non profits affiliate of Native American Bank. She also served as Chairperson for the Blackfeet National Bank, the first national bank located on an Indian reservation and owned by a Native American tribe. Cobell was one of its lead organizers of the bank and was instrumental in the formation of the Blackfeet Reservation Development Fund, Inc. Her work on the Individual Indian Monies Trust Correction and Recovery Project has won admiration by many. This is a project to reform the U.S. Government on the management of Individual Indian Trust Assets. Ms. Cobell is a recipient of the 1997 "Genius Grant" from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation's Fellowship Program, and the Cultural Freedom Award from the Lannan Foundation.
Cobell's professional, civic experience and expertise includes serving as a Board Member for the Tides Foundation, the Northwest Area Foundation, First Interstate Bank, the Montana Community Foundation, a Trustee of the National Museum of the American Indian, as well as a member of other boards. Cobell served for thirteen years as the Treasurer for the Blackfeet Indian Nation in Montana. In addition to operating a working ranch with her husband, which produces cattle and crops, she is active in local agriculture and environmental issues, founding the first Land Trust in Indian Country and servers as a Trustee for the Nature Conservancy of Montana. She is a member of the Blackfeet Indian Tribe of Montana.
Michael Sherraden
Michael Sherraden is one of the foremost innovators addressing poverty alleviation. His 1991 book Assets and the Poor and subsequent work around asset building have spurred a growing national and international movement to create and incentivize savings opportunities and the building of long-term assets for the poor. For the last eighteen months, Sherraden and his colleagues at the Center for Social Development at Washington University in St. Louis have turned their attention to the unique challenges and opportunities for wealth creation among the rural poor. Sherraden’s presentation will focus on major insights arising from the research. He will discuss how the history of rural America has created significant wealth for some, while leaving many behind, why there are significant opportunities among those people that have been most disregarded, and how policy, philanthropy, practice and research might contribute to enhancing rural wealth.
David Dodson, MDC, Inc.
David Dodson is the President of MDC Inc, a cutting edge institution that provides leaders and stakeholders with valuable research, strategies, and support to advance equity and opportunity throughout the American South. Dodson directed major projects to strengthen public schools and community colleges, address rural economic decline, create new philanthropic structures, and build multiracial leadership for civic change in the Carolinas, the Deep South, and Appalachia. Dodson is coauthor of several MDC publications including Building Community by Design, Creating Economic Opportunities for Every Young Person (2000), and Building Communities of Conscience and Conviction: Lessons from MDC's Recent Experience (1998) and spearheaded the collaborative research with MDC and Duke University that resulted in an extensive study of poverty in four rural North Carolina counties. Dodson’s presentation will focus on the impact of wealth creation on people of color in rural communities and it’s linkage to poverty and economic success. He will discuss the “coloring of rural poverty,” the dramatic demographic and economic changes adversely affecting people of color, and the causation and regional transformation opportunities in rural regions.
Karl Stauber, Northwest Area Foundation
Karl Stauber is President and CEO of the Northwest Area Foundation, which helps communities reduce poverty. The Foundation serves communities in Iowa, Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, Idaho, Washington, and Oregon. Prior to becoming the Foundation's president in 1996, Stauber served as a senior appointee in the Clinton Administration at the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) in Washington, D.C. Stauber's work focused on rural development policy, education efforts, and implementing the community development portion of the President's Northwest Timber Initiative. As the first Senate-confirmed Under Secretary for Research, Education, and Economics, he oversaw the consolidation and integration of USDA's "knowledge producing agencies." Before being nominated for the Under Secretary position, Stauber served as the Deputy Under Secretary for Rural Development at USDA.
From 1986 to 1993, Stauber was vice president of programs for the Northwest Area Foundation. Prior to joining the Foundation in 1986, Stauber managed an alternative venture capital firm in Colorado. He also served as executive director of the Needmor Fund, based in Toledo, Ohio, and as assistant director of the Babcock Foundation in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.
Stauber holds a Ph.D. in public policy from the Union Institute in Cincinnati, Ohio, a certificate from the Program for Management Development at the Harvard Business School, and a B.A. in American Studies from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. He has written and spoken widely on rural development and public policy issues.
As a volunteer, Stauber is a member of the Board of Directors of the Minnesota Council on Foundations, Forum of Regional Association of Grant-makers, and National Council on Foundations. Previously, Stauber was a member of the Presidential Advisory Board on Tribal Colleges and Universities, the vice-chair of the USDA Task Force on Federally-funded Agricultural and Forestry Research Facilities, and on the boards of many non-profits.
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