Faith Roessel is an attorney and member of the Navajo Tribe of Indians originally from Round Rock, Navajo Nation (Arizona) and has served on the Leadership Council of Convergence – Center for Policy Resolution since its inception. Faith brings to Convergence a varied background with a career in law, policy, education and advocacy focused on communities of color, especially on behalf of American Indian tribes and American Indians and their families, children, and youth. Her work with Convergence is about bridging and building understanding about our country’s first Americans through communication and cross cultural exchange and identifying local community involvement, ownership and empowerment as a means toward just and equitable solutions that take all voices into account.
Faith is President of the Board of Directors of the Association on American Indian Affairs and board member of Americans for Indian Opportunity, two longstanding national Indian advocacy organizations. She is a former board member of the Child Welfare League of America and of the American Bar Association’s Commission for Opportunities for Minorities in the Profession. Faith was appointed to the White House Presidential Advisory Board on Tribal Colleges and Universities and to the Indian Arts and Crafts Board of the Department of the Interior, which she chaired. She was a member of the U.S. Consensus Council for Search for Common Ground-USA.
Faith directed her tribe’s Navajo Nation Washington Office, the liaison with Congress and the federal government; was a senior staff attorney for the Native American Rights Fund; and, was an associate in her tribe’s then-general counsel’s office. She has served in government as deputy assistant secretary of Indian Affairs and special assistant to the Secretary, both within the Department of the Interior and as a legislative assistant to US Senator Jeff Bingaman (ret.).
Faith is married and has three sons. Her family maintains strong ties to their home community of Round Rock, Navajo Nation and she and her sons created and have led every summer a high school community service trip there and to the southwest, involving students from the Washington, DC area.
