Board of Directors
Announcing Our Inaugural Board of Directors
We are honored to announce the formation of Native Voices’ inaugural Board of Directors!
Board Member, Chair
Mary Kathryn Nagle
(Cherokee Nation)
Board Member
Maura Dhu Studi
Board Member
Jonodev Chaudhuri
(Muscogee Nation)
Board Member
DeLanna Studi
(Cherokee Nation)
Board Member
Elisa Blandford
Announcing Our Honorary Board
We are profoundly grateful to recognize Native Voices’ distinguished Honorary Board Members, whose extraordinary leadership, artistry, and advocacy have helped transform the visibility and representation of Native peoples in American culture.
Honorary Board Member
Rick West
(Cheyenne)
Honorary Board Member
Wes Studi
(Cherokee Nation)
Mary Kathryn Nagle (Board Chair)
Cherokee Nation
Mary Kathryn Nagle is an enrolled citizen of the Cherokee Nation. She is an attorney whose work focuses on the restoration of tribal sovereignty and the inherent right of Indian Nations to protect their women and children from domestic violence and sexual assault. From 2015 to 2019, she served as the first Executive Director of the Yale Indigenous Performing Arts Program. Nagle is an alum of the 2013 Public Theater Emerging Writers Program. She has received commissions from Arena Stage, the Rose Theater (Omaha, Nebraska), Portland Center Stage, Denver Center for the Performing Arts, Yale Repertory Theatre, Round House Theater, Oregon Shakespeare Theater, and the Kansas City Repertory Theatre. She also works in film and television. Most recently she served as an Associate Producer on the film PREY and a writer on the Netflix series ABANDONS.
She is most well known for her work on ending violence against Native women. Her play Sliver of a Full Moon has been performed in law schools from Stanford to Harvard, NYU and Yale. She has worked extensively on Violence Against Women Act re-authorization, and she has filed numerous briefs in the United States Supreme Court, as a part of the National Indigenous Women’s Resource Center’s VAWA Sovereignty Initiative, including most recently, Denezpi v. United States, United States v. Cooley, Oklahoma v. Murphy, Oklahoma v. McGirt, Oklahoma v. Castro-Huerta, Brackeen v. Haaland, and United States v. Rahimi. She represents numerous families of Murdered and Missing Indigenous Women and Girls, including Kaysera Stops Pretty Places’ family who have brought a public campaign demanding an investigation into her murder. In 2025, she was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Maura Dhu Studi
A respected actor, writer, director, Emmy Award winning producer and cultural advocate whose decades of work in film, television and theater has elevated Indigenous artists and stories and championed the next generation of Native creatives.
Jonodev Chaudhuri
Muscogee Nation
Jonodev Chaudhuri serves as Ambassador of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation, the fourth largest tribal nation in the United States, and among the first to enter into treaty relationships with the US. The creation of the Ambassador position in 2019 renewed a long tradition held by the Muscogee Nation, as well as tribal nations throughout the continent, of utilizing diplomats to engage with other sovereigns on a government-to-government basis. As Ambassador, Chaudhuri works with congress and federal agencies, as well as representatives of tribal nations, states, and other governments to advocate for and advance the interests of the Muscogee Nation.
Chaudhuri is a lawyer by trade, with extensive experience representing tribal nations throughout the US. He has served as a judge for five different tribal nations, including serving as Chief Justice of the Muscogee Nation. Chaudhuri has also held policy positions within the federal government, including service as Chairman of the National Indian Gaming Commission from 2013-2019, having been nominated by President Obama in 2013 and unanimously confirmed by the U.S. Senate. During his tenure as NIGC Chairman, Chaudhuri oversaw the $32.4B Indian gaming industry, comprised of approximately 500 gaming facilities, operated by 244 tribal nations across 29 states. Because of the unique structure of the Ambassador position, and in accordance with tribal law, Mr. Chaudhuri represents select tribal clients on matters that strengthen tribal sovereignty and economic opportunity throughout Indian country. His limited private practice helps him stay abreast of legal developments impacting tribal nations. His tenure as Ambassador of Muscogee (Creek) Nation has encompassed the Supreme Court's historic ruling in McGirt v. Oklahoma, wherein the Supreme Court ruled that the Muscogee (Creek) Nation's Reservation remains in existence. Since the issuance of this opinion on July 9, 2020, Ambassador Chaudhuri has been tasked with meeting with world leaders, U.S. Attorney Generals, Members of Congress, and other leaders of various sovereigns, tribal nations, and state governments as the Muscogee (Creek) Nation has worked to implement one of the most seminal Supreme Court rulings since the Court's decision in Brown v. Board of Education.
DeLanna Studi
Cherokee Nation
DeLanna Studi is an enrolled citizen of the Cherokee Nation and has more than twenty-five years of experience as a performer, storyteller, educator, facilitator, advocate, and activist. Her theatre credits include the first national Broadway tour of the Tony Award– and Pulitzer Prize–winning play August: Osage County; off-Broadway’s Gloria: A Life (Daryl Roth Theatre); Informed Consent (the Duke on 42nd Street); and regional theatres (Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Portland Center Stage, Cornerstone, and Indiana Repertory Theatre). DeLanna originated roles in more than eighteen world
premieres, including fourteen Native productions. A pivotal moment in her career was writing and performing And So We Walked: An Artist’s Journey Along the Trail of Tears, which retraced her family’s footsteps along the Trail of Tears with her father. And So We Walked has been produced off-Broadway, throughout the country, and was recorded for Audible. In film and television, DeLanna stars in the Peabody Award–winning Edge of America, Hallmark’s Dreamkeeper, Goliath, Shameless, and General Hospital. She is a 2022 USA Fellow and a recipient of the Butcher Scholar Award, a MAP Fund Grant, a Cherokee Preservation Grant, and the Doris Duke Performing Artist Fund. In 2026, DeLanna was the first Native playwright to be nominated for the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize. Since 2007, she has served as chair of the SAG-AFTRA National Native Americans Committee.
Elisa Blandford
Elisa Blandford has produced over fifty new play workshops and readings, a dozen short play festivals, nine world premieres, and a few touring productions with Native Voices. She co-founded Vanguard Repertory Company and the Windmill Arts Center, a black box theatre and dance studio dedicated to fostering the performing and visual arts. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in theatre from Florida State University and received an MBA from the University of Redlands.
Rick West
Cheyenne
Founding Director and Director Emeritus, Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian, President and CEO Emeritus and Ambassador for Native Communities, Autry Museum of the American West, and an internationally respected museum leader whose work transformed the representation of Indigenous peoples within cultural institutions.
Wes Studi
Cherokee Nation
Honorary Academy Award® recipient and one of the most celebrated Native actors of our time, whose extraordinary career has created opportunities for generations of Indigenous artists.
