A success story: the tale of Jacqueline Johnson: from her rural Alaska Native roots, to her mission in Washington, D.C., this high-energy woman has broken the glass ceiling.

It's a long way from Juneau to Washington, D.C.: 2,830 miles as the crow flies, to be exact. But for Jacqueline Johnson, an Alaska Native who now lives in the nation's capital, the distance traveled cannot be measured in miles alone.

Johnson was born 49 years ago into a hardworking, but struggling, Juneau Tlingit family, not too proud to take food handouts from grocery stores and past-due food. By age 26, she was a single mom with four children. That, however, was not the end of the story. These days, Johnson is executive director of the nation's oldest and largest Native American advocacy group in Washington, D.C., the National Congress of American Indians (NCAI). When she calls U.S. senators on the telephone, they pick up the receiver.

"I enjoy working with Jackie on many issues," said Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) in a written statement. "She is a skilled diplomat who listens to Native people and passionately articulates their views to the Congress and the Executive Branch. She testifies frequently before the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs and is well-liked by congressional staff from both sides of the aisle. That gives her entree to virtually every office on Capitol Hill."

How Johnson got there is a story of her enormous capacity for work, a refusal to accept barriers, and some lucky breaks. But it all began with a vision.

A CHILD AMONG SIX

Born into a family of six children, Johnson said her parents were self-employed in a variety of businesses, which, if not financially lucrative, imparted a strong sense of business ethics to all the children. A good high school student, Johnson attended college in Utah, did well, and seemed destined to escape the Native Alaskan binds of gender and economic disadvantage. But Alaska and tradition exerted a reverse pull. Pressured by family and tribe members, she said she eventually did what was expected: she dropped out of college, got married, and rapidly had three kids.

Johnson had always been close to Tlingit Chief Donawaak (Austin Hammond). In the late 1970s, near the end of his life, Donawaak fell gravely ill and at one point lingered on the edge of death.

"He felt like he had passed to the other world," Johnson said. "But his grandfather said it was not his time and that he had to go back because he had a duty to teach his grandchildren. He recovered, and for the rest of his life he felt a total duty to develop structures to teach about our culture. He said, 'I want to teach our children our ways, but not just our children. More people need to understand who we are.'"

Donawaak proceeded to set up a program where public schools in Haines and Juneau serving both Native Alaskan and non-Native children were visited by Native Alaskan elders who taught them traditional culture and crafts, which Johnson said was the first time this had been done. Beginning in 1983, Johnson assisted him in setting up the program, an experience that she said brought home the importance of hard work and of bridging the gap between her tribal identity and the larger non-Tlingit world.

STARTING SMALL

After a variety of low-level interim jobs while she raised her young children and tried to finish college in fits and starts, in 1983 she also began working full-time for the Tlingit-Haida Regional Housing Authority, the largest housing developer in Southeast as an office assistant and jack of all trades. Passionate about serving the housing needs of the Tlingit villagers, she rapidly impressed supervisors and elders with her sharp mind, formidable and glowing knowledge of housing development and lending practices, and strong people skills, said Edward Thomas, president of the Central Council of Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska.

"I remember at one point when she was a finance officer (at the Authority), we had serious problem with tenant accounts receivables, with tenants threatening lawsuits against the Housing Authority," Thomas said. "Jackie, who was pregnant at the time, spoke to the angry tenants at a meeting and explained the program in terms they understood and that led them to understand their responsibilities as homeowners. By the time we concluded the meeting, people were coming up to her and asking about her family and, just as through there had been no tension at all, she worked with them, and treated them just like old friends."

MOVING UPWARD

Johnson's rise at the Authority was meteoric: she earned five promotions in three years alone, and rose from an accountant to, successively, housing manager, administrative officer, deputy director, and, in 1989, executive director of the Authority. Her mother and sisters' help in taking care of her children was invaluable, she said.

As executive director, she expanded the geographic areas in which the Housing Authority built to include Juneau and helped pioneer then-innovative housing development practices that leveraged and greatly increased the Authority's economic power. In one program she implemented, local governments would donate several parcels of land, and the Authority would develop two lots and would leave one lot to the city that was much more valuable because of the Authority's investment in infrastructure and development.

She also created a community development financial institution to develop mortgage products for low-income families, one of the first financial institutions designed to serve Native Americans, who typically lacked access to financial loan securitization programs like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac that benefited mainstream residential homeowners. Proceeds from the venture were reinvested in the Tlingit community and Johnson worked with local unions to create programs to teach tribe members work ethics and skilled professions like plumbing and construction, and to help provide day care for single moms.

Johnson aggressively sought more funding for the organization from co-ventures, federal funds, banks, block grants and private funding sources. The Housing Authority's revenue increased from $1.9 million in 1989 to $9.4 million in 1998, with employment growing from 35 to 75 employees over the same period, said Ed Phillips, Housing Authority business manager from 1990 to the present.

Johnson's entree onto the national stage came in 1990, when she attended the first meeting of the Association of Alaska Housing Authorities. At the meeting, she spoke forcefully of the need for an assertive voice for Native Alaskans in the debate regarding national housing policy. She was promptly elected by the group to be its representative to the National American Indian Housing Council (NAIHC), which represents tribes throughout the territorial United States.

BREAKING STEREOTYPES

At her first NAIHC board meeting, Johnson said she received a less than warm welcome from a middle-aged, all-male board. Johnson said the other 15 members made a stream of side comments about how she should take a submissive "womanly role" on the board and joked that a meeting Johnson had with a board member must have been a romantic relationship. One day of that was enough, she said.

"The second day of the meeting, I said 'Let's just stop the meeting and have a conversation. Do you have a problem with me being on the board? If so, let's talk about it. If not, let's just treat me like any other person with value to contribute to the board. And I'll respect you as you choose to respect me.' They were flabbergasted and I never had that problem again."

In fact, four years later, Johnson was elected chairperson of the organization. During her term of office, she pushed for the group to create its own agenda, rather than just continue its tradition of passively responding to already existing federal programs. This culminated in Johnson's invitation to 50 tribal leaders and housing experts to meet in Washington, D.C., to chart the future of housing for Indian Country.

THE SEN. STEVENS CONNECTION

She took the list of ideas proposed at the meeting and helped draft legislation that was later championed by Sen. Ted Stevens (R-AK) and enacted as the Native American Housing Assistance and Self-Determination Act of 1996. The Act revolutionized how Native American housing funds are provided to tribes by recognizing their authority to make their own business decisions, increasing their flexibility in using federal funding, and creating loan guarantees and bond financing.

Following enactment of the law, Johnson sat on a committee that negotiated rules to implement the legislation with the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). During the process, Johnson developed a strong working relationship with HUD Secretary Andrew Cuomo and others in the Clinton Administration. In 1998, Cuomo offered her a deputy assistant secretary position to join HUD to implement the Act, which she accepted.

SUPERVISING 213 EMPLOYEES

The new position was not a ceremonial post, and was quite a leap for Johnson, who never had time to finish college but who would now supervise 213 employees, many with advanced degrees. To succeed in her new position, Johnson said that she turned to books like Michael Hammer and James Champy's "Reengineering the Corporation" to reorganize her Office of Native American Program to function under the new legislation, and, for inspiration, Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen's "Dare to Win." Burning the midnight oil was easier now that three of her four children were over 18 and in college.

During her three years at HUD, Johnson son developed a streamlined mortgage-lending process for Indian Country to replace a process previously mired in a variety of federal bureaucratic requirements. She also developed training and help programs that included a training center to provide technical housing assistance; Native Ed, perhaps the first Native American economic development help desk; and a financial literacy campaign to improve Native American understanding of basic financial concepts. She also coordinated a historic visit by President Clinton to the impoverished Pine Ridge reservation in South Dakota, the first visit by a president to a reservation in 63 years.

NEW AGENDA

With the election of George Bush in 2000, and Johnson's sense that Indian housing would be less of a priority under his administration, she began looking for new opportunities. Johnson, long a member of the NCAI and the chair of its economics and finance committee, was recruited to become executive director of the NCAI.

Upon arriving at the NCAI in 2001, she encountered an organization that had difficulty making its payroll and that many critics in Indian Country said was out of touch with their needs. The solution came, she said, from treating the organization like a business.

Johnson addressed the immediate financial challenge by streamlining the organization's finances item by item. She then turned her attention to increasing Indian Country respect and support for the organization and instituted an aggressive membership campaign.

"We had to convince the tribes that this was a good investment worthy of additional funding. We asked ourselves what do the tribes need from us? What are we selling, what are we selling it for, what is the competitive edge, why should they pay us?

"We decided our niche was that we were the voice for Indian Country in D.C. and we needed to have the best communications system possible from tribe to tribe. Part of that was moving from fax to e-mail and convincing tribes if they and we were not part of the e-mail system, they would lose out. They agreed.

"The other main issue that we agreed that tribes care about is protecting their sovereignty. We had had a long losing streak in the Supreme Court on sovereignty issues. We started a Supreme Court initiative whereby we obtained better lawyers, brought leaders to town to discuss creating a strategy to consistently approach sovereignty issues, and began to pick cases for appeal more carefully."

The result is that whereas in the 15 years before 2001 the organization had on average lost roughly 80 percent of its Supreme Court cases; since 2001, there have been three favorable Supreme Court decisions and two unfavorable ones, a dramatically improved ratio, said John Dossett, the NCAI's general counsel.

Financial matters have also improved. The NCAI's budget has risen from $2.6 million in 2001 to $4.7 million in 2005 and net assets have risen from $573,000 in 2001 to $1.3 million in the most recent audited financial statement of 2004, Johnson said. From 2001 to 2004, membership revenue more than tripled from $181,000 to $562,000.

A PROUD MOMENT

A personal accomplishment that Johnson takes pride in was persuading both major political parties' Election 2004 presidential candidates to attend the NCAI's annual convention in November 2003, the first time either party's candidates had participated. Johnson said that by spreading buzz in the mainstream press that Indian Country votes could prove decisive in battleground states, she was able to persuade both parties to integrate Indian caucuses into their conventions, to adopt Native American platforms, and to hire Native American campaign workers.

While the NCAI works with all tribes, Native Alaskan concerns remain near to her heart. Johnson said that many Native Alaskan issues, such as infrastructure and economic opportunities, are complicated by the federal government's lack of recognition of Alaskan tribes as sovereign nations. She currently is working with Murkowski to pass legislation that would amend the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act to allow more Native Alaskans to enjoy benefits that flow from the Act. The new legislation would reduce the size of the majority of Native Alaskans shareholders under the act who must vote affirmatively to expand the rolls from 80 percent to 51 percent.

Another ongoing connection to Alaska for Johnson is her service since 2000 as a board member of Sealaska Corp., the Tlingit-Haida-owned diversified land and natural resources corporation.

"She's a very smart, high-energy, can-do type of person who can interact with anyone," said Chris McNeil Jr., chief executive of Sealaska. "She provides the board with advice practically real-time on federal legislation issues and on how to work with other minority groups across the country to maintain a good level of communication and goodwill."

On a personal level, Johnson said she has tried to maintain her connections to Alaska in a variety of ways. She participates in the tribe's biennial Celebration festival where, she said, "I dance and sing in traditional ways to my heart's content." On a monthly basis, she also cans preserves and sews into the wee hours to keep up Tlingit ways.

Serving as a bridge between her tribe and others and between Native Americans and mainstream America, Johnson said she believes that she is fulfilling Donawaak's vision:

"I think he's with me and he's helping to make this happen. I think that he's pleased."