Melissa Yazzie

Melissa Yazzie is the Assistant Director of Outreach and Communications at the Project on Indigenous Governance and Development at the Harvard Kennedy School. Before joining the Harvard Project, she supported students at Eastern New Mexico University providing personal and career counseling; enhanced her curiosity in scaling innovation and reducing silos in the Higher Education Innovation Fellowship with Switchboard; and elevated diversity, equity and inclusion with the Center for Diversity & Inclusion at Washington University. In addition to roles in higher education, Melissa also supported the Denver urban Indian population in her role with the Denver Indian Family Resource Center, championed tribal sovereignty with the National Indian Child Welfare Association, and held administrative positions with Native American Bank in Denver, as well as in the corporate mortgage and finance sectors.

Melissa holds an MSW with a concentration in American Indian and Alaska Native populations with an emphasis on policy from the George Warren Brown School of Social Work at Washington University in Saint Louis, where she was a Buder Foundation Scholar, an MBA with an emphasis on American Indian Entrepreneurship from Gonzaga University, and a BA from the University of Colorado Colorado Springs. Melissa is a citizen of the Navajo Nation.