Christy Finsel, Executive Director of the Oklahoma Native Assets Coalition, Inc., was invited to participate in Native Access to Capital, Credit and Approaches that Increase Financial Security: A Roundtable Discussion.  The roundtable was held yesterday, February 14, 2017, in the Cash Room at the Main Treasury Building on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C. 

The welcome was provided by Beverly Ortega Babers, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Management & Budget and Point of Contact for Tribal Consultation, U.S. Department of the Treasury. 

Annie Donovan, Director of the U.S. Treasury Community Development Financial Institutions Fund, provided the opening remarks. 

From Oklahoma, Christy Finsel was joined by Shane Jett, Executive Director and CEO of Citizen Potawatomi Community Development Corporation, as one of the twenty-seven invited roundtable participants. 

Miriam Jorgensen, Research Professor and Director of Native Nations Institute at the University of Arizona, and Research Director of the Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development, presented material from the newly released Access to Capital and Credit in Native Communities Report. 

To view the recorded roundtable discussion, go to: https://www.treasury.gov/press-center/Video-Audio-Webcasts/Pages/Webcasts.aspx.  From there, you can click on the recording, Native American Access to Capital Roundtable, from February 14, 2017.

Here are links to the “Access to Capital and Credit in Native Communities Report” (ACC Report) and its companion report the “Access to Capital and Credit in Native Communities: A Data Review.” 

ONAC thanks the CDFI Fund and the Department of the Treasury for the opportunity to participate in this event.