Nick Tilsen

Executive Director, Thunder Valley Community Development Corporation

Nick Tilsen is a citizen of the Oglala Lakota Nation, the founding Executive Director of the Thunder Valley Community Development Corporation, and a father of four children. Nick has over 15 years of experience in working with non-profits and tribal nations on projects that have a social mission. As the founding executive director of Thunder Valley CDC, Nick has played a vital role in creating a community development organization that is working with the local grassroots people and national organizations in the development of a sustainable regenerative community that creates jobs, builds homes, and creates new opportunity on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. In 2014, Tilsen was selected as an ASHOKA Fellow, joining a global network of the world’s leading social innovators. Nick works tirelessly to bridge governmental and philanthropic partnerships that are centered around getting resources into the hands of people who are leading positive social change work on the ground in Native American Communities. Nick sits on the boards of the Indigenous Peoples Power Project and the Water Protector Legal Collective, and he helped with on-the-ground organizing in the fight against the Dakota Access Pipeline in Standing Rock. Nick firmly believes that we need to defend Indigenous nations from negative resource extraction while at the same time building the sustainable and regenerative communities of tomorrow.