BURNING CEDAR SOVEREIGN KITCHEN - Key Persons
Job Titles:
- Executive Chef
- Executive Director
- Founder
- President of the Board
- Board Member for Matriarch
Nico Albert Williams (ᏣᎳᎩᎯ ᎠᏰᎵ Cherokee Nation) is a chef, caterer and student of traditional Indigenous cuisines based in Tulsa, Oklahoma. She began her culinary education growing up in California and Arizona, spending time in her mother's garden and in the kitchen preparing family meals. After relocating to Northeastern Oklahoma, Nico embraced her return to the post-removal homeland of her mother's people as a calling and opportunity to reestablish a relationship with her Cherokee community, first and foremost through the language of food. Her journey to learn traditional Cherokee ways, dishes and the wild and cultivated ingredients involved in their preparation grew to encompass the Indigenous cuisines of tribes from all parts of Turtle Island and led to her involvement in Indigenous food revitalization and food sovereignty.
Ashley Dailey began her career in 2010 working as a new home sales associate for local builders in the Tulsa, OK greater area. In the middle of a tough market, Ashley found a way to revitalize slow moving new home developments.
Dr. Valarie Blue Bird Jernigan is a Choctaw woman and Professor of Medicine and Rural Health. She received her Doctorate in Public Health from the University of California, Berkeley, and completed a postdoctoral fellowship in cardiovascular disease prevention at Stanford University, where she also completed a degree in documentary filmmaking. She is the Principal Investigator of more than a dozen research studies aimed at improving Indigenous food environments through policy and systems interventions. She also leads the Center for Indigenous Innovation and Health Equity, funded by the Office of Minority Health. Dr. Jernigan is a member of the Canadian Institutes of Health research College of Reviewers. She is the inaugural chair of the National Cancer Institute's Intervention Research to Improve Native Health (IRINAH) initiative, a collaboration of NIH-funded investigators conducting intervention science research. In 2019 she established and now directs the Center for Indigenous Health Research and Policy (CIHRP), an endowed research Center of Oklahoma State University's Center for Health Sciences. In all of her work she has focused on fostering long-term, mutually beneficial relationships with Indigenous communities that promote tribal sovereignty and build community capacity to improve health.
Job Titles:
- Treasurer of the Board
- Chief Financial Officer of Bacone College
"Initiating wellness in our communities has never been more crucial for our people. Eat like your life depends on it, because it does."
Recognizing the impact food had on her own journey to a better quality of life, Mary Jo is energized and inspired to support, create, develop and deliver wellness to our communities.
Mary Jo currently serves as the Chief Financial Officer of Bacone College, a private non-profit institution of higher education that was originally founded in 1880 as The Indian University.
The mission of higher education resonated with her because her personal constitution directly aligns with the mission to empower people to take ownership of their future through education. This means elevating human potential and creating a new pathway for our people to new beginnings. The ultimate goal of our efforts is to reduce gaps because we know education elevates the human condition and advances human potential.