Making dreams a reality for the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe’s economy and community 

Joe Nayquonabe has spent his career reimagining and reinventing how American Indian tribal economies grow and prosper, and he’s just getting started.

Now the CEO and chair of the board of directors for Mille Lacs Corporate Ventures, he is responsible for analyzing new business opportunities and overseeing the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe’s existing businesses.

Before earning a bachelor’s in marketing from St. Cloud State University’s Herberger Business School in 2004, Nayquonabe started his postsecondary educational journey in Brainerd.

“I was a good student, but I was also a mediocre basketball player, so I had designs on playing Division II basketball. I had a full-ride scholarship to Dartmouth for academics, and I passed that up so I could play basketball at Central Lakes College in Brainerd,” he said. “It probably turns out to be the best decision I ever made, but when I look back at it, I’m just like, ‘God, what the hell was I thinking?’”

After finishing his Associate of Arts, Nayquonabe said he bounced around a bit before landing in Washington, D.C. through American University’s Washington Internships for Native Students program.

“That was a big pivotal point in my academic career,” he said. “I thought, ‘Wow, there’s so much stuff out here for me to do. What else can I do?’”

Nayquonabe returned to Minnesota with his wife after she graduated from Mary Baldwin University. By that time he knew he wanted to go into business, and enrolled at the University of Minnesota with the hopes of being accepted into the Carlson School of Management. After a year of being denied acceptance to Carlson, Nayquonabe reevaluated his options, ultimately bringing him to SCSU.

“I’ve always had this affinity to St. Cloud State, because that’s where my dad went. My dad used to bring us to school with him when we were kids and he’d like stuff us in the back of the auditorium, tell us to behave, and we’d sit there and observe him in that academic environment,” he said. “So I thought: I love that school, I’ve gone to basketball camps there since I was a kid, I was familiar with the campus, and I knew the Indian Center really well — because that was one of the biggest things for me that my dad kind of ingrained in us, was if there’s support for Indian students, that’s always a good thing and we should take advantage of that. So that’s how I ended up at St. Cloud State, and I finished my bachelor’s degree there.”

He started interning with Grand Casino’s marketing department, and said it essentially launched his career. Nayquonabe said he worked his way up the ladder in marketing with the skills he learned at SCSU, and was doing so well that he was asked to consider becoming CEO. Feeling he wasn’t knowledgeable enough at the time with areas outside of marketing, he went back to Carlson and earned his MBA, and then enrolled in the University of Minnesota-Duluth for its inaugural Master of Tribal Administration & Governance program — launched by one of Nayquonabe’s mentors.

“I saw a lot of benefits to that, because I had been working on the business side of the Tribe for so long, that I thought it would be beneficial to me that if anybody ever knocked on my door again about being the CEO, that I knew a little bit more about what was going on in the tribal government side,” he said.

Now CEO and having been with Mille Lacs Corporate Ventures for over 22 years, Nayquonabe said the company and Tribe have grown and diversified. In addition to gaming, economic development work is continuously being done in areas such as broadband development, childcare and workforce housing in order to build up the Mille Lacs Tribal economy. A big factor in the success of the Tribe and MLCV is people, according to Nayquonabe.

“The motto I use a lot is that ‘Ideas are what move companies forward, ideas are what move communities forward.’ So I really pride myself on developing good relationships, meeting as many people as I can, trying to find diverse sets of people. Really, the end goal in meeting all those people is ultimately finding diverse ideas to pursue, and I just love that. It just doesn’t get old,” he said. “I love hearing what dreams and visions people have for the future — whether it’s in one of our restaurants or creating housing in the community — I just love hearing what people have, what people are thinking about, and then helping them organize that and getting them the capital and the other resources they need, and then just getting out of their way.

“Inspiring and motivating people to do their best work — that’s something I’m passionate about. I love seeing people grow and achieve, and I think that’s probably what I’m most passionate about, is just seeing people win. It’s always a team effort, so any role I can play in that success of others — that’s really what I do.”

It’s Nayquonabe’s hope that he can continue to positively impact his community through the work that he does — especially for the youth, the elders and the Tribe as a whole.

“My niche is Indian country, because I’m a member of the Mille Lacs Band. I think about how blessed and fortunate I was, to have a really stable household with two parents who were hard-working and driven. I grew up in the ’90s when Indian gaming was just starting to impact the community, so I had a pretty bright path on getting to where I wanted to get,” he said. “I think that’s the impact I’m trying to have — how do I continue to light that path for the youth, how do I role model the habits that they can utilize to be successful, and let them know there’s just a lot stuff out here that they can do? I think that’s one of the big impacts I want to make, is set the tone for the next generation to continue the work of the Tribe and the work we’re doing at Mille Lacs Corporate Ventures.”

Nayquonabe hopes to give elders stability and economic viability during the last chapters of their lives, especially due to all the sacrifices and decisions they had to make and the hard work they put in. He wants them to be able to be proud of where the community is heading and know that the torch has been passed and carried forward. This leads Nayquonabe to the impact he hopes to have for the Tribe as well.

“The other one I think about a lot is the existence of the Mille Lacs Band. We’re kind of constantly under attack for our Tribal lands and our boundaries, our sovereignty, and the resources we generate at MLCV are really used by the Tribe to protect that,” he said. “I think about that a lot, because Mille Lacs Band members — there’s a lot who live here but there’s a lot who live all over the world. Just to be able to protect the place we all call home, no matter where we’re at, that’s really important to me.”

There’s a big vision for the Mille Lacs Tribal economy and what’s being done through Mille Lacs Corporate Ventures, and many goals as a result. Nayquonabe said the hope is that MLCV will be a billion-dollar business by 2030, and goals connected to that include creating new industries and career paths for Tribal members, more involvement in government contracting and hospitality, and entering into the cannabis space, to name a few.

“To do all of that, we have to have a thriving community, so a lot of goals I have are around infrastructure, development across east-central Minnesota — making sure we’re addressing some of the pain points that affect the workforce, things like quality affordable housing,” he said. “So I have dreams and big visions about continuing our efforts to build workforce housing throughout the Tribal economy, additional job creation, childcare creation — we opened our first childcare center last year and we want to continue to open more, energy development throughout the Tribal economy so that we have some sort of energy sovereignty and affecting the carbon footprint of the Tribe — that’s a big goal of mine. We’ve done one pretty substantial solar energy project and we plan on doing more of that throughout. I’d love to see that and I have a lot of goals around energy independence for the Tribe.”

To achieve those goals, Nayquonabe said it comes back to people. Whether it’s encouraging his daughters and motivating them to chase their dreams, or developing new role models within the Mille Lacs Band — people will bring those goals to fruition.

“Back to the original passion of people. I have a lot of goals about attracting more talent to the community, a lot of goals around really having Mille Lacs Corporate Ventures being a career accelerant for folks who are in the industries we’re in,” he said. “I want them to come here and have the best time of their career, and I want them to build new skills and do new things — whether it’s with us or with another tribal community. I have big goals around that, too. I’m just seeing us become this cool talent magnet that people, even if they’re just stopping here for a few years, they’re better off for having been with us.”

Three things Nayquonabe typically tells people to invest in are intelligence, integrity and energy. To him, those are key to having an impact.

“It’s never over. You have to continue to learn. Anywhere you can consume knowledge, and once you consume the knowledge, it’s figuring out how to share that to have an impact. I also recommend people find their core values. You should be able to rattle off what your two or three or four core values are, and then show up with those every single day. Integrity to me — it’s not what you’re doing when everybody’s watching, it’s what you’re doing when nobody’s watching,” he said. “You’re going to face challenges, you’re going to face a whirlwind of stuff you don’t necessarily like and you might not be prepared for, and your energy can get drained. So you’ve got to find good habits — how to take care of yourself, how to restore energy, and then how to bring that and show up with it every single day you enter the workspace. People feed off of that, and then you get to feed off their energy, so having energy is just so important. You could call that passion if you wanted to, but really just bringing the energy and bringing the heat as often as you can.”