Franci Taylor, (Choctaw) is the Director of the University of Utah’s American Indian Resource Center has over twenty-five years of experience in American Indian education that ranges from early childhood to advanced-terminal degrees.  She directed two award-winning college preparation bridging programs for American Indian youth, and has developed effective, best practices, recruitment, and retention programs at the junior high school, high school, and university levels. She came to the University of Utah from Washington State University (WSU) where she was the Native American Retention Specialist and Director for the American Indian Student Center.  While at WSU she served on the Campus Climate Council and was part of the Provost’s Council supervising the Memorandum of Understanding with 15 Northwest tribes and the University.

Franci served on various state and national level boards and committees on American Indian educational issues, including the University of Oklahoma’s advisory board on American Indian education for the National Conference on Race and Ethnicity in American Higher Education, where she presented institutes on coalition building and American Indian history and contemporary issues in education.

She has lectured on American educational issues at the local, state, national and international levels and has taught at the university level in both the United States and Europe. She is a member of the Indigenous People’s Permanent Forum for the United Nations. She continues to participate in the National Indian Education Association, American Indians in Science and Engineering Society, Association of Native American and Alaskan Professors, and the National Academic Advising Association.

She has degrees in Anthropology and Archeology and Native American Studies. She taught for the Faculty of Archeology Graduate School in the Netherlands with a focus on Tribally Controlled Cultural Resource Management. Her focus of research in Grad School was American Indian women who have attained terminal degrees (Ph.D., EdD, Juris Doctorate, etc), ethnobotany – which is the study of uses and identity issues. Franci is also a traditional dancer and well as a bead and quill worker.