About The AIO Ambassadors Program

Mission of the Ambassadors Program

AIO’s highly acclaimed Ambassadors Program is an Indigenous values-based community capacity-building, leadership development initiative launched in 1993. The Program helps early to mid-career Native American professionals strengthen, within an Indigenous cultural context, their ability to improve the well-being and growth of their communities.

History of the Ambassadors Program

In the early nineties, a prestigious group of Native Americans, Alaska Natives, and other advisors, met for three days to help conceptualize a program that would foster growth amongst the Native American community. The Ambassadors Program helps early to mid-career Native American professionals strengthen, within an Indigenous cultural context, their ability to improve the well-being and growth of their communities. AIO nurtures a new generation of leaders through experiential learning activities and specialized curriculum that reaffirms cultural values and identity, and helps emerging community leaders incorporate these values into solutions that build sustainable communities.

In 1993, the American Indian Ambassadors Program began, and to date, AIO has successfully completed ten classes, training more than 200 emerging Native American leaders, spread across thirty-six states, representing over 100 tribes.

The Ambassadors Program is the only leadership initiative in the United States encouraging participants to weave their respective traditional tribal values into a contemporary reality. The Ambassadors Program provides a creative combination of curriculum including; mentorship, personal reflection, dialogue with national decision-makers, community involvement, communications training, and a discovery process into tribal values.