WASHINGTON, D.C. – President Biden has included a Chickasaw legal scholar among several new appointments to the Community Development Advisory Board. Chickasaw citizen Janie Simms Hipp, J.D., LL.M., was appointed to the 15-person federal advisory committee to the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Community Development Financial Institutions Fund (CDFI Fund). The function of the advisory board is to advise the CDFI Fund’s director on the policies regarding the activities and programs of the CDFI Fund.
Hipp serves as the founding CEO of Native Agriculture Financial Services (NAFS), a non-profit financing institution within the Farm Credit System of lending institutions. NAFS focuses on meeting the capital access needs of First American farmers, ranchers, fishers, and forest land operators and their rural communities.
Hipp is the founding CEO of the Native American Agriculture Fund, the nation’s largest philanthropic organization focusing solely on improving Native food and agriculture, and was the founder of the Indigenous Food and Agriculture Initiative at the University of Arkansas School of Law. She is also a member of the Chickasaw Hall of Fame. Hipp was raised in Idabel, OK, and now resides in Fayetteville, AR.
Prior to leading NAFS, she served as the general counsel of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). Hipp is the first enrolled member of a First American tribe to serve as USDA general counsel, and the fourth woman to serve since 1905. She previously served USDA Secretary Thomas J. Vilsack during the Obama-Biden administration as a senior advisor and was the founding director of the Office of Tribal Relations at USDA. She also previously served as a national program leader at the National Institute of Food and Agriculture, and a senior official within the risk management agency.
Hipp has almost 40 years of experience in agricultural law, having begun her work during the 1980s farm financial crisis. She is a recognized expert in agricultural law and in the intersection of agricultural law and Indian law. She has been honored by University of Arkansas and Oklahoma City University where she received her LL.M. in agriculture and food law, and her J.D., respectively, and by numerous other organizations for her expertise and leadership.
Since its creation in 1994, the CDFI Fund has awarded more than $7.4 billion to Certified Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFIs), community development organizations, and financial institutions through the CDFI Program, the Bank Enterprise Awards Program, the Capital Magnet Fund, the Financial Education and Counseling Pilot Program and the Native American CDFI Assistance Program. In addition, the CDFI Fund has allocated more than $76 billion in tax credit allocation authority to community development entities through the New Markets Tax Credit Program and guaranteed nearly $2.5 billion in bonds through the CDFI Bond Guarantee Program.
