Meet the team

Principal & Research Director

As principal and research director, I oversee our research team and projects. With a focus on community-based development, I work primarily with Indigenous Nations, nonprofits, and rural communities to help them actualize their goals. I conduct surveys, interviews, focus groups, and community meals to help organizations retrieve and compile the information they need to make data-driven decisions. My work is centered on people — their values, their needs, and their experiences. Through this lens, I help organizations streamline their program delivery, emphasize storytelling, and use data to craft powerful narratives that drive change.

One of my favorite types of situations is working with Native Nations to utilize their lands, visions, and other resources to plan for holistic development — tying in youth, elders, food sovereignty, workforce, and economic, housing, and political development that emphasizes the continuation of healthy lifeways and the imagining of new possibilities. In day-to-day conversations, I often still hear development spoken about as singular events or actions. That is not real life. When people inherently see all these things as connected, I get excited.

When I am not working on Sweet Grass-related projects, I am sleeping, working in the garden, cooking, roaming the woods, listening to [Christmas] music, or roughhousing with my family.

Pronouns: he/him

Email: michael@sweetgrassconsulting.net

Team: Research