Eileen Briggs is a citizen of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe. She is the Executive Director of Cheyenne River Sioux Tribal Ventures. As Executive Director, she is currently in year nine of a ten-year poverty reduction plan with Tribal Ventures. Briggs is the Principal Investigator on the Cheyenne River Voices Research – a reservation wide research project; the household survey of over 800 families is creating a historic set of baseline data for the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe and others serving the reservation population. In collaboration with researchers at NNI, she is creating a series of papers on Tribal Data Sovereignty & Governance.

Briggs received her Bachelor’s in liberal arts for human services/speech communication and Master’s in education from the University of Minnesota. She is President of the Board for Ta-te (Four Winds)Energy, Inc. and serves as a Board Member for the South Dakota Budget & Policy Project.Previously she has worked with with Sacred Circle National Resource Center to End Violence Against Native Women.