Harvard University Native American Program

We Are Harvard

Student Profiles

The Native students who attend Harvard each year are an incredibly talented, motivated, and diverse group of people from communities all across North America. Their dreams have carried them to one of the most unique and challenging educational institutions in the world for many different reasons.

Below, you will have the opportunity to meet a few of them and to hear their stories.

Kelsey Leonard

Kelsey Leonard had many choices out of high school: top-notch academic institutions on both coasts coveted her abilities. However, her Native people’s strong ties to Harvard University and her desire to make a difference for Native peoples led her to Harvard. Kelsey has already traveled extensively abroad, has served as a president of one of Harvard’s on-campus Native organizations, and chaired the planning for a major conference and several events.

I am originally from the Shinnecock Indian Reservation, located on the east end of Long Island, New York. I’ve lived in many different places throughout my life as part of a military family, which has afforded me the opportunity to meet many amazing people. My mom is an alumna of Wellesley College and since I was little I knew I wanted to follow in her footsteps.

When I was applying for college, Harvard was not at the top of my list. It was not until I had a chance to meet the HUNAP community and the students of Native Americans at Harvard College that I knew I wanted to come to Harvard. Everyone was so welcoming and friendly, and they treated each other like family. I chose Harvard because of the community here and because of the potential for me to help shape the future of Harvard’s relationship with Native America. The moment I knew that I had made the right decision was one evening when I was standing outside Matthews Hall reading the names of the students (my Algonquian relations) who had come before me. I knew I had come full circle - I was where my ancestors wanted me to be.

I am just me. But I am the first in my family and in my nation to attend Harvard, and that is a great source of pride for the people I hold most dear in this life. Harvard has already opened so many doors for me and given me opportunities I could never have imagined.

As a freshman, I enrolled in the Harvard Kennedy School course Nation Building II. It was not until the conclusion of the summer of 2007 that I knew I had been given the opportunity to be in that class for a reason. One of my classmates was the Honorable Norris Prevost, a Parliament Member in the Commonwealth of Dominica, an island in the southern Antilles of the Caribbean). He offered me the chance to intern with him in Dominica for the summer working with indigenous youth. It was one of the best experiences of my life.

I look forward to finishing my education at this institution and remaining someone my people can be proud of. I do not know where my path will lead me, but wherever it does I want to walk in a good way. I was told once that our words are our medicine - maybe one day my words will be medicine for Indian Country.

Jon Swan

To say that Jon Swan is pressed for time is an understatement. In addition to being a joint-degree candidate at the Harvard Kennedy School and Harvard Business School, Jon is married with two children. With a fellow MBA student, he founded a chapter of a national student organization for future Native business leaders at Harvard.

I am a product of two worlds, in that my father is American Indian (Chippewa Cree) and my mother is mixed European. I grew up in a very rural community, on and off the reservation, in north central Montana. My parents went their separate ways when I was young, forcing me to balance the pressures of the mostly non-Indian community in Havre, Montana and the Rocky Boy’s Indian Reservation, which was only a few miles away.

Looking around the reservation, it was clear to me that its biggest need not being adequately addressed was in enterprise development and finance. After graduating from the University of Montana in 2003 in finance and economics, I joined the Native American Bank, which opened my eyes to issues beyond my reservation and gave me the opportunity to see the beauty of diversity in indigenous communities. Having spent quite a bit of time in these communities as a commercial banker, I began to notice the disconnect between public policy and lending practices. I came to Harvard searching for solutions to tribal economic development questions. I accepted the offer of admission to Harvard partly because of the presence of the Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development.

I am now pursuing master’s degrees at both the Harvard Kennedy School and the Harvard Business School. I focus on issues involving securing titles to land, navigating the tribal court systems, and adapting policy to the high turnover of some tribal governments. The Master in Public Policy (MPP) program at HKS has given me powerful tools to tackle public policy. Whether at the quantitative end of conducting multivariate regression analysis, or the softer end of recognizing effective leadership, the Kennedy School has transformed my method of approaching difficult public policy problems. At HBS, I started a chapter of American Indian Business Leaders (AIBL) with another Native MBA student, Jon Bauch. We plan to open the chapter to the greater Harvard community in order to foster the delicate and important balance required to conduct business in Indian communities.

I have often found HUNAP to be a home away from home. Carmen, Steve, Natasha, and Bill are great resources for me and make their office space comfortable for native students to mingle and chat as well as discuss some of the difficult issues facing future generations of Indian leadership. Without HUNAP, it is fair to say that I would probably feel like another cog in the machine that is Harvard. With them, however, I feel that I’m a valued member of the community.

I honestly feel that I will leave this place with more questions than answers, which will only make life in Indian Country much more interesting.

Jonella Larsen

Jonella Larsen can pinpoint certain experiences at a young age that helped to define what she hoped to accomplish in her professional life. Jonella, born and raised in the far Pacific Northwest, is currently a graduate student pursuing a degree in Museum Studies after working in a number of museum settings across North America.

I was born and raised in Nome, Alaska and am the second of three children. My mother is St. Lawrence Island Yupik originally from Savoonga, Alaska and my father is Scandinavian descent originally from Minnesota. Therefore, I consider myself Yupikavian. I feel fortunate to have been raised in Alaska with very close ties to my relations from St. Lawrence Island. Up until high school, our family would often spend two months of the year on the Island, for the bowhead-whaling season in April and again for the holiday season in December. It was during these visits, while immersed in the Yupik culture and hearing the Yupik language spoken fluently, that some of my fondest childhood memories were formed.

My summers growing up were spent on the coast with my family at our fish camp and on the rivers camping outside of Nome. During my first two years of college, my friends would talk about spending their summer months as youth at “summer camp” or “band camp” and I would talk about spending mine at “fish camp.”

In 1996, I participated in my first internship at the University of Alaska’s Museum of the North in Fairbanks and was introduced to a very large collection of Yupik material housed in the collection range of the museum. Seeing cultural material from my grandparents’ generation and the generations before them was life-changing and opened my eyes to the uniqueness of our cultural heritage. It was then that I knew that I wanted to make my career in the museum field.

In 2000, I received my BA from the University of Alaska in Fairbanks in Alaska Native and Rural Development with my concentration in Cultural Documentation and Community Planning. I did some volunteer work immediately after graduating and then worked a few years in the museum field in Vancouver, BC and in Portland, Oregon. I started looking into master’s programs in museum studies shortly there after.

I visited a few campuses and programs on the east coast before making my decision on which school to apply to. Knowing that there was a strong Native American program at Harvard eased the decision-making process.

I have worked in several departments at the Peabody Museum, including the Curatorial, Conservation, and Repatriation departments. I was interested in gaining as much experience in these particular departments because I know ultimately they will be valuable for my future work in Alaska.

I am currently working on my thesis proposal. I would like to focus on the influence tribal museums and culture centers have on tribal sovereignty and how the indigenization of a conventional Western institution has contributed to Native communities retaining and sustaining aspects of their cultural heritage.

Student Groups

Students and student organizations are at the heart of the HUNAP community. There are a large number of different student organizations at Harvard University, representing an enormous variety of interests from law to medicine to powwow dancing. All of them are open to anyone interested. For a list of organizations, click below: Native Student Organizations