Larry Chavis

Larry is a member of the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina, an economist and an emerging memoirist. He is focused on assisting the Project on Indigenous Governance and Development create impactful material that can engage a range of constituencies, especially Native American leaders and their communities.

Larry currently teaches economics at Kalamazoo College after being a faculty member at the University of North Carolina Kenan Flagler Business School for 18 years. From 2017 to 2021, he served as Director of the UNC American Indian Center where he led a team focused on supporting Native peoples across North Carolina and providing a home for Native students on campus. For his efforts in those endeavors, he was honored with eagle feathers by the Lumbee and Coharie Tribes. He also earned five teaching awards at UNC and was inducted into the school’s oldest honor society, the Order of the Golden Fleece.

Dr. Chavis’ primary training is in development economics with a particular focus on the impact on institutions of small businesses, although he has written on a range of topics of from Indigenous pedagogy to economic boycotts. He is currently writing a memoir on growing up Native American and navigating the academy in the South.

In 2025, Larry earned an MFA in Creative Writing from the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe. His time as IAIA, helped him to learn to express economic lesson through storytelling. He also holds a PhD in economics from the Stanford Graduate School of Business, master’s degrees in applied economics and Southeast Asian studies from Cornell University and an undergraduate degree in anthropology from Duke University. In 2022-23 he as a visiting scholar at the Minneapolis Fed’s Center for Indian Country Development.