Natasha K Hale
Natasha K Hale, the Native American program director at Grand Canyon Trust, knows what it takes to fight for the land. Raised in the community of Twin Lakes, New Mexico, on the eastern side of the Navajo Nation, Hale is both Navajo and Saudi Arabian. Having served as the appointed legislative staffer for the speaker of the Navajo Nation, in 2011 she launched the Native American Business Incubator Network, which supports social entrepreneurs committed to building local economies that respect and uplift traditional values. In 2015 she was appointed by the Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition to help support the efforts to protect millions of acres of ancestral lands in southeastern Utah. That effort eventually led to the creation of Bears Ears National Monument by the Obama administration, which in late 2017, the Trump administration decided to reduce by 85%.