Meet the Three Native Women Selected for the Forbes 50 over 50 Women List

The third annual Forbes 50 over 50 Impact List came out last week, and three women making an impact in Indian Country made the list along with high visibility women such as Gloria Steinem and Jamie Lee Curtis.

The list highlights dynamic female leaders and entrepreneurs who have achieved success over the age 50, often overcoming formidable odds or barriers, providing that success has no age limit.

This year’s list, produced in partnership with Mika Brzezinski and the Know Your Value platform, divides these women into four categories: Impact, Investment, Innovation, and Lifestyle.

Meet the three women–already well known to Indian Country–who made the list:

Fawn Sharp (51), President of the National Congress of American Indians: In November of 2021, Sharp (Quinault) became the first tribal leader to receive diplomatic recognition from the U.S when she represented all 574 tribes at the United Nations COP26 Summit in Glasgow. Sharp was elected president of the Native Congress of American Indians in 2019 and was reelected in 2021. She is the current vice president of the Quinault Indian Nation in Taholah, Washington. Sharp holds a J.D. degree from the University of Washington and certificates from the National Judicial College at the University of Nevada and the International Human Rights Law at Oxford University. She graduated from Gonzaga University in Spokane, Washington, with a degree in criminal justice when she was just 19 years old, and before becoming a lawyer, she worked for the CIA and the Washington State Department of Corrections.

Stephine Poston (55), Co-founder of Native Women Lead: Stephine Poston (Pueblo of Sandia) is one of the co-founders of Native Women Lead, an organization she helped establish to invest in and provide loans to Native women founding and running businesses. She is also the founder of Poston & Associates, a full-service communications firm specializing in serving the Native American population. Under Poston’s guidance, Native Women Lead has piloted three lending programs since 2020 to help Indigenous businesses in New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado, and Utah. She launched the Matriarch Restoration Fund in March 2022, which offers $10,000 to $50,000 loans at 3 percent interest rates to Native women artists, makers, crafters, and creatives in the Indigenous communities.

Cynthia Chavez Lamar (51), Director of the National Museum of the American Indian, Smithsonian Institution: Cynthia Chavez Lamar (San Felipe Pueblo) took office as the director of the National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI). She is the first Native American woman to lead a Smithsonian Institution museum. She oversees an institution with more than 1 million objects and photographs and over 500,000 films, digital images, and other media documenting Native Nations and tribes’ cultures and experiences. Chavez Lamar grew up in Katishtya, the Pueblo of San Felipe (her tribe’s reservation), and earned a doctorate in American studies from the University of New Mexico. Chavez Lamar’s career is coming full circle. The first job she took after earning her doctorate was an internship at NMAI, contributing research towards the museum’s expansion. Under her leadership, the NMAI dedicated the National Native American Veterans Memorial in 2022. It was a $15 million project and the first large public celebration the NMAI held since March 2020.

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