Former Board Director, Alaska Native leader
Los Angeles, CA
Jennifer Fate Velaise served as an elected Alaskan Native leader for 20 years. She grew up in Fairbanks, Alaska and on her Yukon River ancestral lands, where her mother lived an Athabascan nomadic lifestyle. Jennifer’s formative years were an intense period of change — the oil pipeline boom and the largest indigenous land claims settlement, which secured 44 million acres into Alaska Native ownership and established Native-owned corporations. As a young girl, she recognized the vulnerability of Native people with no education or business know-how. With extreme levels of Native poverty and unemployment, it became her mission to promote education and business self-determination.
After attending Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School and Stanford Business School (MBA ’88), Jennifer worked for a major Hollywood studio, structuring mergers, acquisitions and producer deals. In Brussels, she consulted for the European Union and Benelux media companies. Upon returning to the US, she and her husband invested in public markets and start-up business ventures. In 2006, Jennifer was elected as one of the 13 Alaskan Native leaders to the interior region tribal corporation—an infrastructure, utilities, and tourism company and one of the largest private landowners in America. She served as Investment and Audit Chair, Corporate Officer and other roles. Jennifer also served as President of the educational foundation, where she restructured, oversaw the endowment, and increased educational scholarships. Jennifer served as Co-Chair of the GSB Racial Equity Task Force and various other boards.
Jennifer is married to GSB classmate Jean-Louis and has 3 sons: a political consultant, a lawyer and a Marine infantry officer (BS, ‘23).
With Jean-Louis Velaise
