ASU program gives Native American entrepreneurs a boost

The presenter went around the conference room on Friday morning, asking participants if they thought of themselves as entrepreneurs. Crickets. Not one of them — eight Native American business owners — raised their hand or said yes. “We’re taught to be humble in that sense, not to boast,” said Kelsey Haake, a Phoenix-based certified financial manager and estate planner. “We haven’t been ingrained to think ourselves of that way.” Haake (pictured above, center), originally from the Inupiaq Tribe in northwestern Alaska, said humility is heavily emphasized in Indian Country and that Native Americans are taught not think of themselves as better than others or go out of their way to stand out from the crowd.