Shannon O'Loughlin

Shannon O’Loughlin is a citizen of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma and the Chief Executive and attorney for the Association on American Indian Affairs, the oldest nonprofit serving Indian Country, since 1922. Shannon is a former Chief of Staff to the National Indian Gaming Commission, where she assisted in the development and implementation of national policy throughout the agency, and oversaw the agency’s public affairs, technology, compliance and finance divisions. Shannon has also served Indian Country in the private sector​ as an attorney​, leading a large national firm’s Indian law practice group ​and ​bringing more than 18 years of Indian Country legal and policy work to strengthen, maintain and protect Indian nation sovereignty, self-determination and culture. Shannon was appointed by Secretary​ of the Department of the Interior, Sally Jewell, to the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act Review Committee in 2013, and was appointed by President Barack Obama as the first Native American to the Cultural Property Advisory Committee within the State Department in 2015; she was fired by President Trump in 2019. ​Shannon received a B.A.​ in American Indian Studies​ from California State University, Long Beach, and joint M.A. and J.D. degrees from the University of Arizona​ in Indigenous Peoples Law and Policy​.