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Joanne Dunn

2013 Speaker

Joanne Dunn is the executive director for the North American Indian Center of Boston. Her extensive experience spans more than 30 years of service to Boston’s Native Community. Joanne is Mi’kmaq and an enrolled member of the Wagmatcook First Nation Indian Reserve in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. She is a commissioner with the Massachusetts Commission on Indian Affairs representing the north of Boston and former field supervisor for the Harvard Divinity School. More recently she was appointed to the Institute for New England Native American Studies (INENAS) Inaugural advisory committee at UMass in Boston. She continues to dedicate her life to social justice for all Native American Indians, encouraging empowerment, pride and promoting greater self-sufficiency. Dunn was born in Portland, Maine, and raised in Boston, Massachusetts.  Dunn earned her Certificate of Advanced Graduate Studies in business management (CAGS) at Radcliffe College in Cambridge, Massachusetts.  She completed leadership training at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University in an executive program entitled, “Leadership for the 21st Century: Chaos, Conflict, and Courage.”