Meet Our Executive Director
Shadiin garcia, phd
Laguna Pueblo (Kawaika) and Chicana
Executive Director, Native Women Lead
"I am deeply honored to join Native Women Lead, an organization rooted in the strength and vision of Indigenous women, dedicated to advancing economic sovereignty and transforming systems. With humility and purpose, I am excited to run at strengthening connections and championing the success of Native women entrepreneurs, ensuring we all have the tools, resources, and support to not only thrive, but to reclaim our joy and sovereignty."
Shadiin is Laguna Pueblo and Chicana hails from New Mexico, the heart of Aztlán. She has over 62 first cousins, over 30 aunts and uncles, and is obsessed with her two sons and her sister’s two children. Her friends describe her as a truthteller and mirror-holder who centers everyone's wisdom and gifts. She describes herself as an awkward runner, an irreverent story teller, avid reader, terrible dancer, and deep belly laugher.
Shadiin brings decades of expertise in education, policy, and social justice to this role. She worked for over 20 years as a teacher, as a public school administrator, researcher, a policy analyst, Indigenous education leader, and as a consultant. She has a Bachelor's Degree from Yale University in English with a specialization in education; a Master's Degree in Educational Leadership and a PhD in Critical and Sociocultural Studies in Education from the University of Oregon.
From education, philanthropy, and advocacy to policy, strategic planning, and transformational leadership, Shadiin has spent more than two decades working to create conditions conducive to culturally sustaining multiple ways of being and knowing centering relationship and trust. She operationalizes an unrelenting belief and vision that centers the full humanity of all people and all children, through a refusal to accept and abide by colonialist expectations and assumptions.
After working in public schools as a teacher and administrator, with the first teaching post at the Heart of the Earth Survival School in Minneapolis, an AIM-founded school, Shadiin Garcia transitioned to state government as the Deputy Director of Policy and Research for former Oregon Governor John Kitzhaber. Her extensive portfolio includes diversifying the educator workforce, centering Indigenous education methodologies, liberating philanthropic spaces, advocating for Indigenous and tribal sovereignty, and organizing for authentic community engagement. She has significant experience working with tribal and reservation communities, urban Indigenous and Hispanic, Latinx, and immigrant communities, as well as rural and urban public education settings, philanthropy, research, and policy.
Her work spans groundbreaking projects from Oregon’s Senate Bill 13: Tribal History/Shared History, which embedded Native narratives into statewide curricula, to conducting research utilizing Indigenous methodologies, coaching on language reclamation, land rematriation, and frame assets-based approaches. Shadiin is an expert driving a collective process that harnesses people’s lived experiences but does not extract, undermine, or damage community. She does so by being in right relationship with the land under our feet and leading with vulnerability, humility, strength, and love.
Experience
Executive Vice President at Metropolitan Group
Senior Strategy and Operations Advisor for the Oregon Department of Education
Executive Director of the Educator Advancement Council in Oregon
Deputy Director of Policy and Research, Chief Education Office, Oregon
Indian Education Lead Consultant at Education Northwest
National social justice consultant