Leaders in Native Finance and Venture Capital Join Change Labs Board

Lakota Vogel of Four Bands Community Fund and Betsy Fore of Velveteen Ventures bring decades of leadership in Native entrepreneurship and capital access.

Change Labs is excited to introduce their two newest board members, Lakota Vogel of the Cheyenne River Sioux tribe and Betsy Fore of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians.

Vogel is the Executive Director at the Four Bands Community Fund Inc., a non profit organization and a certified Native Community Development Financial Institution (CDFI) on the Cheyenne River Sioux Reservation in South Dakota. Four Bands Community Fund Inc., has been around for about 26 years and Vogel has been the executive director for 15 years.

“I’m so interested in all the ways that we’ve been so resourceful as Native people to make our environment work for us,” Vogel said. “We always talk about the barriers that exist, and that’s true but there’s so many ways that I know Change Labs has been resourceful and created solutions and fit that to their community that I’m excited to learn from.”

Fore is the founding partner of Velveteen Ventures, which invests in children and planet centered companies. She is also the bestselling author of “Built on Purpose,” a co-founder of Natives Rising and the first Native American to raise a Series A, over $20 Million total. She is also the recipient of multiple awards and accolades as well as a three times founder of two multi-million dollar brands and a non-profit.

“I have been such a massive fan of everything that Change Labs has done and represents within the Navajo Nation,” Fore said. “They are really setting the tone for what’s possible in Indian Country.”

Fore added Change Labs is trying to make a difference for entrepreneurs in their communities as well as for the next generation of Natives and she’s excited to be a board member to connect with colleagues and partner with them to create access for those who need it.

Both women have paved their own path and faced struggles to get to their success.They hope their experiences are beneficial to the board and to Change Labs entrepreneurs. They are excited to network, learn and take back their experience from the board to their own communities.

“I’m really excited because I feel my background is one where I can help founders from the sense that I’ve walked that path,” Fore said, adding she wants to help them achieve their wildest dreams.

In her work, Fore takes an Anishinaabe perspective of the seven grandfather teachings and she hopes to teach others how to break down their values and figure out the common thread in their life that no matter what they are working on, those set of specific values guide their path.

“I think about all the setbacks I had, all the no’s from investors or customers and that I held fastto those values and that’s what I was able to keep coming home to and feel good and safe about what I was building and who I am,” she said. “So I think we all have access to that but it’s really difficult to tap into when you come from a scarcity mindset and you’re trying to build an abundance mindset.”

Fore said unlocking the creator spirit in entrepreneurs is important and creates a feeling of abundance and realizing that wealth is the ability to give back. Fore said she thinks about the founders of Change Labs and how they’ve been able to give back through their work with funding and mentoring.

“For us money can be medicine that can flow back to our communities. And I think that’s what we’re all trying to do here,” she said.

Fore’s goal with the board is to find where they can make the biggest impact and how they can multiply that impact.

“How could this be a playbook that we then replicate amongst the tribes to create these entrepreneurial hubs and centers and representation for our community,” she said. “I’m trying to figure out how I can connect the dots here where we can all have more resources together, to be able to live a life of abundance, essentially for our communities and generate generational wealth in some ways, for the very first time. I think so much of my heart’s desire around this work is to create that access and that representation.”

At Four Bands, Vogel said they have a theory of change which starts with education, teaching people about credit, small businesses, mortgages, all the loan products, helping them make good decisions with their money. Clients are then moved into the incubation program but the support from Four Bands doesn’t stop there, support extends post-loan with a belief in continuing to build a relationship with entrepreneurs.The organization offers leasable space for small businesses within the community to start their journey below market rate rent.

“So I’m hoping I can add value (to the board) but I also know that they’re going to see something that I’m doing that could be improved and I’m eager to hear what that is,” Vogel said.

Vogel said a lot of their time at Four Bands has been spent trying to change the system that impacts why Native communities can’t get access to capital. She added the current financial tools aren’t made for Native communities and there are centuries worth of non-Native creating products that don’t work for tribes.

“We’ve been left behind for centuries of building wealth in America,” she said. “So that looks a lot of ways, like not just small businesses, but it’s the mortgage capital. Even credit building, like within our community on the reservation, our banks have chosen not to report to credit bureaus and so that has left us as a credit invisible population.”

There is a blanket over tribal communities and accessing capitals, Vogel said, adding it’s up to organizations like Change Labs and Four Bands to continue poking holes into that blanket.

“I always feel aligned with what Change Labs is doing in my work,” Vogel said. “So I’m looking forward to seeing how that plays out as a board member, learning how they have structured the organization to better serve its employees as well as serve its entrepreneurs.”