WASHINGTON, D.C. – The White House recently announced U.S. President Joe Biden’s inclusion of a Chickasaw legal scholar among several new appointments to the Community Development Advisory Board (the 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 nonprofit 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 also 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.
Hipp is a member of the Chickasaw Hall of Fame. She was raised in Idabel, Oklahoma, and now resides in Fayetteville, Arkansas.
Prior to leading NAFS, she served as the general counsel of the United States 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.
Hipp is the granddaughter of the late Chickasaw citizen Irene Spencer Simms, an original enrollee. Her father was Thomas Spencer Simms, and her uncle was Barry Simms, who practiced law in Oklahoma for more than 50 years.
About the CDFI Fund
The Sept. 19 meeting of the Advisory Board commemorated the 30th anniversary of the establishment of the CDFI Fund.
In addition to Hipp, President Biden appointed three private citizens who are new to the Advisory Board, including Manuel Chinea, New York; Mark Kaufman, Baltimore, Maryland; and Susan Chapman Plumb, Hulbert, Oklahoma, who serves as board chair and chief executive officer of Local Bank and is a citizen of the Cherokee Nation.
“I am pleased to congratulate and welcome this esteemed group of professionals who share the CDFI Fund’s vision of an America in which all people and communities have access to the investment capital and financial services they need to prosper,” said CDFI Fund Director Pravina Raghavan.
The president also reappointed five private citizens who have served on the Advisory Board since September 2021.
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.
To learn more about the CDFI Fund and its programs, please visit the CDFI Fund’s website at CDFIfund.gov.