Deborah Reed, legal assistant at Cherokee Nation Businesses and a 40 Under 40 honoree at the National Center for American Indian Enterprise Development’s Indian Progress in Business Event (INPRO) 2009, looks at the relationship of American Indian communities and the rest of the world through a unique lens.
A 1993 graduate of the University of Oklahoma, Reed has worked extensively on international development in the former Soviet Union and the Middle East. As part of one project, officials from Jordan visited some tribes in the U.S. to learn how they approached water conservation and watershed protection. During that visit, Reed saw how much the Jordanians learned from the people in the U.S. best able to teach water ethics. Her conclusion? “Most tribes are still focused inward, but the time is coming for tribes to engage on the world stage. They hold the key to development in Central Asia and the Middle East.”
Reed’s experience on the world stage began soon after college where she majored in journalism and communications, graduating in 1993. “I minored in Soviet history and was looking for opportunities to travel in the former Soviet Union (which collapsed in 1991). I found a job broadcasting in English for Radio Tashkent (the capital of Uzbekistan). They had shortwave broadcasts in all the major languages.”
Winrock International, a nonprofit that works to empower the poor through economic development and related projects, noticed Reed and hired her as a small business specialist to advise women and business students in Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. Civil war began in Tajikistan in 1992.
“The country was in the middle of civil war by the time I got there. I learned that in a civil war, there’s fighting in one area, but everywhere else life goes on.”
A brief stint in Dallas as a systems analyst was followed by another assignment from Winrock. This time, Reed was project director for the Women’s Integrated Legal Literacy Project, a USAID-funded project in Uzbekistan.
“The country is now Muslim, but the laws are still those of the former Soviet Republic, where women had equal rights,” Reed said. “My job was to tell women what their rights were. As I was teaching women and community leaders, I realized that if I were a lawyer, I could do so much more.”
She was also in Iraq for a civil governance project, which she called “a great opportunity.” For five months from November 2003 to March 2004 (right at the beginning of the current U.S. action in Iraq, less than a year after the loss of Lori Piestewa), Reed administered a USAID Neighborhood Councils project. The project was focused on the selection of council in districts and sub-districts of the Wassit Goverorate and has a strong emphasis on women’s involvement.
In early 2006, CDM, an engineering firm in Cambridge, Mass., got in touch with Reed to ask for her assistance in writing a civil society component for a water protection engineering project in Jordan. In June, she was in Jordan working with women’s groups to develop public awareness and participation in proper wastewater disposal practices in order to protect watersheds from pollution. She spent six weeks in Jordan, then carried on her responsibilities via telephone for a year and a half. Her part in the project ended in 2007.
By then, Reed was back home on the Cherokee Reservation working for the tribal government, first as a community relations specialist, and beginning in November 2007, as legal assistant to Cherokee Nation Businesses’ Senior Vice President and Chief Legal Counsel Robert Huffman.
Following the insight created by her international development work, Reed is attending the University of Tulsa College of Law, where she is set to graduate in December and to take the bar in February.
As part of her duties, Reed is court clerk for employee terminations and a financial analyst. Reed enjoys being back home where she has made great friends and works with people she went to school with. The fourth of five children, Reed grew up in Oaks, Okla., a town of 700 within the exterior boundaries of the reservation. The town was established by missionaries who came to Oklahoma from their mission in Georgia just ahead of the Cherokee removal. They restarted the mission, which still operates today, serving about 30 children who cannot live at home. More than 200 years old, the Oaks Indian Mission is one of the oldest children’s homes in the nation. Reed supports their work by serving on the board of directors.
She is also founder and managing director of Women Making a Way, a business she set up to assist underprivileged, indigenous women in the United States and Central Asia. In 2011, Reed hopes to open a gift shop on the reservation to sell handcrafts by indigenous women.
Reed said her first choice after she receives her law degree would be a job with the Cherokee Nation, but “what jobs are available within the tribe depends on the political atmosphere in Congress. My first choice would be to work for the tribal government. I would like an opportunity to be an attorney for the tribe in any area.” But, she adds, “It’s all a learning experience. I enjoy corporate law, but I’m open to anything.”
Winrock may have another opportunity for her. The organization is bidding on a project she might be invited to participate in. “Opportunities will be there, I have great contacts among the international development community.”
Whatever she chooses, Reed is poised to be one of the people who leads American Indians to take their place on the world stage.