Our Team of experts

---

Jennifer Wolf, MPH, (Ponca/Ojibwe/Santee), Owner and Founder of Project Mosaic LLC, has worked with dozens of nonprofit organizations

to define their needs and next steps. She is on the Johns Hopkins Center for American Indian Health COVID-19 Communication advisory board.  Her clients include First Nations

Development Institute, Johnson Scholarship Foundation, Denver American Indian Commission, Colorado Commission of Indian Affairs COVID-19 Committee, American Indian Science and Engineering Society, National Native American Boarding School

Healing Coalition, and tribal and educational entities. She has led or co-facilitated projects for Denver Indian Health and Family Services, CSU's LEAD Conference, Rocky Mountain Indian

Chamber of Commerce, Project Voyce, North American Indigenous Games, Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, National Native American Aids Prevention

Center, and Illuminatives.org. She has also served as the Director of

Partnership and Business Development for Joining Vision and Action.

A member of the Oglala Lakota Tribe, Richard B. Williams holds the distinction of being the first American Indian student to earn a bachelor's degree from the University of Nebraska.  He earned master's in education administration from UW.  In May 2007, he received an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree from Roger Williams University in Rhode Island. From 1997-2012, he served as president and CEO of the American Indian College Fund, a national nonprofit organization that raises private support for all 32 tribal colleges and universities in the United States.  Throughout his career, he has lectured and presented for various organizations, including the Central Intelligence Agency, National Indian Education Association, the American Indian Higher Education Consortium, and the National Council of Educational Opportunity Associations. In 1993 and 1994, he served as a consulting editor for the Discovery Channel series How the West Was Lost. From 1993 to 1997, Williams served as an instructor for the Indian Studies graduate program at the University of Denver. 

Ida Nelson (Oglala/Santee/Ojibwe) graduated from Gonzaga University with my MBA in American Indian Entrepreneurship and has worked at the Native American Bank, evaluating business plans and critically analyzing financial statements, auditor reports, and personal and business tax returns.  She was also responsible for reviewing and adhering to loan polices and regulatory compliance issues.

Nelson also worked for CRAFT3 with their Indian Country Initiatives program.  At CRAFT3, she provided technical assistance to Native CDFI’s and potential loan clients to foster future pipeline activity.  She helped her clients identify, profile, contact and manage potential partners, funders, and program supporters to support the ongoing success of the Indian Country Initiative. Nelson also assisted in grant research and the application process to encourage giving and community support, including assisting with grant compliance and objective completion to ensure future funding. 

 Savannah Smith, MPH (Navajo), will co-facilitate the process as a member of the Project Mosaic team.  A respected Native of Denver, Savannah has grown up in Colorado and has professional and personal connections throughout the state.  She has worked for DIHFS as an intern, where she was responsible for surveying and recruiting community members to participate in diabetes management classes.  While with DIHFS, she helped coordinate a successful community event to promote wellness and disease prevention which received a Local Impact Award from the National Indian Health Board.   Savannah also was a practicum intern with the prestigious John Snow, Inc., a public health consulting firm. While finishing her MPH degree, she worked with the North Dakota Department of Public Health as a COVID-19 contact investigator. With a strong background in research, Savannah has spent over three years with the Centers for American Indian and Alaska Native Health.   

Eric is both Lakota and Dakota of the Oglala and Wakpa Ipaksan nations. Eric is a proud forth Generation Advocate

for his people. Eric has his Master’s of Public Administration from the University of Nebraska at Omaha, with a focus in

Tribal Management and Emergency Services.  Eric helped to design and develop the program and its curriculum. Eric Has worked with Tribes, FEMA, and the Bureau of Indian Affairs to establish best practices for the tribes in requesting

emergency and disaster declarations.

Eric also worked with American Indian Tribes, Alaskan Native Corporations, and Native Hawaiian Organizations developing their economies. As the Director of Legislative Affairs for the Native American Contractors Association, Eric was a strong policy expert and advocate for the development of Native economies on Capital Hill. He regularly visited Congressional offices and held informational briefings for the Senate

Committee on Indian Affairs and the House of Representatives Committee on Small Business. Eric pairs his passion to serve Native peoples with his knowledge of federal regulations and laws as they

relate to Native populations, his desire is for Native voices to be heard and for action that leads to greater autonomy for indigenous people, globally.

Brad Krueger, MPH, is a passionate, equity-focused, relationship-centric evaluator. He thrives on building systems to collect, review, and present data. His years of experience, working with county health departments, large and small nonprofits, tribal and urban AI/AN organizations, as well as state agencies, has allowed him to interact with diverse stakeholders and audiences. He humbly embraces opportunities leverage data to support the mission and impact of

organizations he is privileged to support. He received his Masters of Public Health from Des Moines University in 2017 after completing his Bachelor of Science in Biology from Bethel University. Since, he has worked as an evaluation partner alongside organizations such as the American Indian Cancer Foundation, Great Plain’s Tribal Leaders Health Board, Minnesota Department of Health, and the Hmong American Partnership.

Robin Carufel (Ojibwe), has expertise in tribal clinics, Indian Health Service, IHS, healthcare systems, and tribal self-governance.  He has managed tribal health clinics, Peter Christensen Health Center -Lac du Flambeau, WI,  
Mille Lacs Ojibwe Nay Ah Shing Health Center- Onamia, MN, Little River Band of Odawa Indians Tribal Health Center-Manistee, MI, and was the Senior Advisor for the Gerald L.Ignace Health Center-Milwaukee, WI.  He was the lead Self-Governance consultant for the Spirit Lake Nation of North Dakota, guiding them to become the first P.L. 93-638 Title V-Self-Governance Compact tribe in the Great Plains Area of the Indian Health Service.  As part of this process, Carufel assisted the tribe in assuming total control over the IHS Service Unit located at Fort Totten, ND.  He also provided guidance to the Gun Lake Tribe of Potawatomi Indians in Michigan in converting to Title V-Self Governance Compact.  Carufel was the IHS National Budget Formulation Co-Chair during the George H. Bush Administration, representing the Bemidji Area. Carufel has also provided consultation services for the Great Lakes EPI Center, working with tribal clinics to teach them how to apply EPI Center data to tribal clinical settings and translate the information to make organizational decisions.  Having managed four tribal clinics, Carufel has experience using EPI center data in conjunction with community health profiles to expand or redesign health services.  He is also adept at forming partnerships between tribal clinics, between sister agencies of IHS, and with the Centers for Disease Control, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, Health Resources and Services Administration, Health and Human Services, state level partners, referral networks and healthcare institutions, and other national organizations that work in the healthcare arena in Indian Country.  

Nancy Rae (Carlanas Apache) Integrative Holistic Health and Wellness Practitioner has developed Wellness Coaching and Lifestyle Medicine programs for both NonNative and Native communities including the University of Denver Plant Medicine Field Study for the STEAM Immersion Camp, is a guest lecturer on Native equity in Science for Teton Science Schools and is an acknowledged Allied Health Professional by both the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Canadian Pediatric Society. She is the first graduate of the Bachelor’s of Science, Extended Major Lifestyle Medicine incubator program from the American College of Lifestyle Medicine at MSU Denver. She provides Botanical Pharmacology, Public Health Education Programs, and is a certified Health and Wellness Coach. Her current projects include equity conversations with NonNative Foundations, The Wolf Quest with Captain Planet, and development of a Culinary Plant-Based Medicine program for medical doctors with the American College of Lifestyle Medicine. She is the Co-Founder of Health and Native Justice NonProfit Organization, Herbal Gardens Wellness.

Sally Carufel-Williams (Santee/Ojibwe) has decades of experience organizing and coordinating national conferences, board meetings, and summer youth programs.  She has also helped organizations get off the ground with strategic planning processes.  As an elder advisor, she brings a wealth of knowledge earned from working with national Native American nonprofit organizations including Native American Fish and Wildlife Society, Native American Rights Fund, and Colorado Indian Upward Bound.  She brings considerable life wisdom and insights, and is well respected and known throughout Indian Country.   

Sally co-facilitates the Project Mosaic process by connecting the obstacles your organization is facing to solutions she has seen work.  She also presents the 7-Rs curriculum to ground your team with the principles of:

• Respect
• Relations
• Responsibility
• Reason
• Reciprocity
• Resiliency
• Revolution