NATIVE AMERICAN CAPITAL - Key Persons
Job Titles:
- Managing Director
- Member of the Management Team
- Member of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma
Dr. Gavin Clarkson, an enrolled member of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma, has resumed his role as Managing Director of Native American Capital, a position he has held since 2007. While on leave, Dr. Clarkson served in the Department of the Interior as the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Policy and Economic Development - Indian Affairs. In that position, he managed the Office of Indian Energy and Economic Development, the Office of Indian Gaming, and the Office of Self-Governance.
Named the nation's "leading scholar in tribal finance" by The Financial Times, Dr. Clarkson has been cited by Bloomberg, the Wall Street Journal, and USA Today on matters of tribal finance and rural economic development. Dr. Clarkson's research and Congressional testimony on tribal access to the capital markets helped lead to the inclusion of $2B of Tribal Economic Development Bonds in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. He is a Sequoyah (lifetime) member of the American Indian Science and Engineering Society (AISES) and served as Chairman of the AISES Foundation from 2005 until 2009.
A licensed attorney, Dr. Clarkson has also held the Series 7, 24, and 66 Securities licenses from the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA). He has helped tribes raise nearly $1 billion for tribal governmental and entrepreneurial enterprises using a variety of financial mechanisms including taxable and tax-exempt bonds, bank credit facilities, and New Markets Tax Credits.
Dr. Clarkson earned his undergraduate and MBA degrees from Rice University and graduated cum laude from Harvard Law School, where he was the managing editor of the Harvard Journal of Law and Technology and served as president of the Native American Law Students Association. While at Harvard, Clarkson simultaneously earned a Doctorate in Technology and Operations Management from the Harvard Business School, where he remains the only HBS doctoral graduate who has also placed in a livestock show.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Advisory Board
- President of the Zelman Education Consulting Group
Dr. Zelman is president of the Zelman Education Consulting Group. Previously, she served as senior VP for education and children's programming at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and was the Superintendent of Public Instruction in Ohio for ten years, leading Ohio from 29th to fifth in the 2009 Education Week Quality Counts Report. Under her leadership, average student test scores increased, earning Ohio the Goldman Sachs Foundation Prize for Excellence in International Education. Dr. Zelman has held executive posts at the Missouri and Massachusetts Departments of Education and chaired the Department of Education at Emmanuel College in Boston. Dr. Zelman holds a PhD in education from the University of Michigan.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Management Team
- Senior Managing Director
- Co - Founder of NAC
Dr. Falkson is a co-founder of NAC and manages all aspects of its day-to-day operations. He leads NAC's tribal financial services consulting practice; specifically, linking tribes to Federal financing programs such as the Community Development Financial Institutions Fund of the US Department of the Treasury. Dr. Falkson worked closely with the Lower Brule Corporation (LBC) to form and organize Lower Brule Community Development Enterprise, LLC (LBCDE). He guided LBCDE through the Federal ‘CDFI' and ‘CDE' certification processes and continues to guide a variety of its financing and business development activities in support of LBC. Dr. Falkson works with tribes and tribal consortia on major, large-scale business ventures. He established Native American Pharmaceuticals (NARx), with PharMerica as an investor and McKesson Corporation as a strategic partner. NARx served as the U.S. Indian Health Service's prime vendor for the IHS southwest region. He served as a consultant to and board of directors' member of PharMerica, Inc., a billion-dollar, publicly traded, institutional prescription drug distributor, acquired by Bergen Brunswig Corporation in 1999. Earlier in his career, Dr. Falkson held three senior public policy positions with the U.S. Government. During the Carter Administration, he was appointed a Public Health Service Fellow and served as senior advisor on HMO policy in the office of the assistant secretary for Health, U.S. Department of Health & Human Services (HHS). He also served as a special assistant for health policy in the office of the secretary, U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (HEW). While a graduate student, Dr. Falkson received a White House appointment to serve on the research staff of the President's National Commission on Urban Problems. Dr. Falkson earned an MBA from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania; a Ph.D. in political science from the University of Michigan- Ann Arbor; and a B.A. in politics from Brandeis University.
Job Titles:
- Executive Director
- Member of the Advisory Board
Leonard Smith, executive director of the Native American Development Corporation (NADC), Billings, MT, a foundation supported economic development facilitator, supporting all of the American Indian tribes of Montana and Wyoming, as well as investing in a variety of projects supporting non-reservation based American Indians. Mr. Smith is an enrolled member of the Assiniboine & Sioux tribe of the Ft. Peck Reservation in Montana. He assistd NAC in searching for, screening, and reviewing a variety of tribal and non-tribal American Indian business projects.
Job Titles:
- Managing Director
- Member of the Management Team
Mr. Rubin advises Native American Capital's business and private equity consulting operations. He has served on the Boards of Directors of several of NAC's tribally-based finance and economic development enterprises.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Advisory Board
The Ohrstrom Family Foundation. A nationally recognized philanthropist, Mr. Ohrstrom sits on the boards of several foundations and corporations. He is the chairman and founding member of the Committee on Outcome-Based Benefits (COBB) - an organization that seeks to improve the cost efficiency and cost-effectiveness of substance abuse treatment.