Dana Arviso is returning to the UW College of Education where she earned her Masters in Education ('06) and completed her doctoral coursework with a focus on Language, Literacy & Culture. She spent the past decade working for Potlatch Fund, a Native American-led foundation, where she served as the Executive Director and grew the grantmaking programs to include the Language Preservation, Native Student Success, and Healthy Pathways for Native Youth strategic initiatives.
She is an enrolled member of the Navajo Nation and grew up on the Bishop Paiute-Shoshone Indian Reservation in California. She earned her bachelor’s degree from California State University, Sacramento in Child Development and worked as an early childhood educator within her tribe’s family literacy program on the Bishop Paiute reservation.
Dana proudly commits herself to improving the lives of youth, families, and communities through education and working for social improvements within the fields of education and philanthropy. She brings a wide-range of experiences in Native education, informal learning, digital literacies and youth filmmaking, family literacy, early childhood education, Native philanthropy, nonprofit capacity building, and cultivating community partnerships.