OUR TEAM
Sheila Bong
Board President
Sheila is a Blackfeet Tribal member who gained an appreciation for Native language preservation transcribing oral traditions from Tribal Elders in her hometown of Browning, Montana. She serves on the Advisory Board of the Northwest Indian Language Institute at the University of Oregon and is also a Co-Founder of Avant Assessment, a language assessment company that delivers a test of Yup’ik and is developing additional Indigenous language tests.
Dr. William Rivers
Board Treasurer
William Rivers has 20 years of experience in culture and language for economic development and national security, with expertise in research, assessment, program evaluation, and policy development and advocacy. Dr. Rivers received his Ph.D. in Russian from Bryn Mawr College and his MA, BA, and BS from the University of Maryland. He speaks Russian and French.
Board Member
Board Member
John Strauss
Board Member
John Strauss is a business consultant with extensive experience founding and supporting early-stage organizations, both commercial and charitable. He has more than 10 years’ experience serving as an officer or director to 501(c)(3) organizations, some of which he helped establish.
X̱ʼunei Lance Twitchell
Board Member
Xʼunei Lance Twitchell (Lingít, Haida, Yupʼik, Sami) is an Associate Professor of Alaska Native Languages at the University of Alaska Southeast, and lives in Juneau with his wife and bilingual children. He speaks & studies the Lingít language, and advocates for indigenous language revitalization through teaching, program development, and legislative changes. Twitchell is an author of poems, stories, and screenplays, and is a filmmaker, musician, and Northwest Coast Artist. X'unei hosts a podcast about language revitalization titled, "Tongue Unbroken".
Jennifer Weston
Executive Director
A lifelong learner of Native American languages, including Lakota language, Weston is a citizen of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe in the Dakotas, and an alumna of Brown University, the Boston Bridges Fellowship at Hebrew College and Boston University, and Visionmaker Media. She brings 30 years of service in the nonprofit, academic and tribal government sectors to her role as 7L CEO, and has collaborated with more than 300 tribal nations’ language and public health programs through prior leadership roles with the National Foundation for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Cultural Survival, Inc., the Wampanoag Language Reclamation Project/Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe and the University of Massachusetts-Boston, where she served as visiting lecturer for the Department of Women and Gender Studies and the Civic Engagement Scholarship Initiative. Jennifer has also served as a grant writer, environmental justice policy analyst and journalist on the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation where she attended K12 public schools. She continues to volunteer her time to local organizations, tribal grassroots organizations and leadership committees. The daughter of Stanford Edwards and the late Marjorie Joanne Edwards (Wacinkiyapi Win), Jennifer carries forward a great-grandmother’s name (Ptesanwin) from her Kills Crow, Flying By, Shoots the Enemy and Taken Alive extended families of Lakota and Dakota relatives. Ptesanwin resides in Massachusetts with her partner of 25 years and remains an active volunteer mentor for the Natives at Brown Alumni organization.
Ajuawak Kapashesit
Director of Development
Ajuawak Kapashesit has a BA in Linguistics from Macalester College where he focused on Language Revitalization and Hispanic Studies. He has worked in Indigenous communities across North America on language revitalization projects including documentation and materials development. In the nonprofit sector, he specializes in development and project development.
Stephanie Witkowski
Senior Advisor
Stephanie Witkowski has over 10 years of experience in both language revitalization and the non-profit sector. She holds an MA in Linguistics from the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa with an emphasis in Language Documentation and Conservation, and has worked with speakers of multiple under resourced languages, including Indigenous languages of California, the Pacific, and Russia.
Kayleigh Jeannette
Project Coordinator
Kayleigh Jeannette has a MA in Applied Linguistics from Boston University. Her research there focused on language documentation and revitalization in endangered and dormant language contexts. She is also TEFL certified and enjoys teaching English to international students. Throughout her work her goal is to use linguistics to support the individuals and communities around her.
Vivien Fröhlich
Project Coordinator
Vivien Fröhlich is a linguistics and computational linguistics student with experience in teaching German, English, French and Spanish. She did research on the endangered creole language Palenquero in different university projects.
Pila Wilson
Emeritus Board Member
Professor of Hawaiian Languages, Founding Member of the 'Aha Pūnana Leo (Hawaiian Immersion Preschool).
Walter Winshall
Board Member
Walter A. Winshall is a private investor with substantial experience in business strategy and startup organizations.
