Conquer the clock to improve your effectiveness and increase productivity

Work smarter, not harder, and you’ll be well on your way to academic success

A little give and take can go a long way toward reaching a satisfactory compromise

Finding a path to compromise is half the battle

There’s no doubt that despite challenges like chronic economic disparity and a shortage of capital (both start-up and expansion), the number of Native American–owned businesses is growing across the board.

When she remembers one of the main reasons she chose to pursue her PhD in chemistry at the University of Rochester in New York, Dr. Naomi Lee can’t help but chuckle. After obtaining an undergraduate degree in biochemistry at the Rochester Institute of Technol­ogy, Dr. Lee applied to a number of graduate programs and was accepted to them all. “I chose the University of Rochester because I was afraid to leave home,” she says. “I was afraid to leave for other schools because they were far from the reservation.”

When Cristin Haase was first thinking about a career in dental health, the inequality in care available to American Indians was on her mind — she wanted to be one of the few Indigenous professionals working on closing that gap.

Mason Grimshaw never envisioned himself walking across the stage at his college graduation. Now, having recently received his bachelor’s degree in business analytics and poised to start a master’s program in the same field, he can’t imagine himself anywhere else. And it all started with a game of cards.

When he was a high school student in Yakima, Wash., Christopher Payne knew exactly what he wanted to do for a living. His father, an electrical engineer, was an avid reader of architectural magazines, and seeing them around the house piqued Payne’s interest. “I would take the floor plans in the magazines and trace them to make my own grand house,” he recalls. “I wanted to be an architect.”

At 15, Caleb Dunlap thought he wanted to become a doctor, but admits his grades could have been better. His parents divorced and often, he says, there wasn’t a lot of extra money for the family of five kids living in northern Minnesota. “I’m Ojibwe from Nagaajiwanaang, the Fond du Lac Reservation 30 miles from Chi-gami [the name his people call Lake Superior],” he says.