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The Native Arts and Cultures Foundation has announced Shyla Spicer as its new president and CEO. Spicer, who is an enrolled member of the Yakama Nation, will take over from founding president Lulani Arquette.
Actually, she already has. Spicer took over the position Dec. 1, but the organization spent the past two months letting people closest to the foundation know about the new hire before it was made public this week.
“I’m not a secret CEO anymore,” Spicer joked. “We were trying to tell the news thoughtfully because it’s such an important transition…Lulani has been the cornerstone of this organization forever.”
In the 15 years that Arquette led NACF, the organization supported nearly 400 artists and arts organizations with grants. NACF, headquartered in Portland, is the first and only nonprofit in the U.S. dedicated exclusively to funding Native art and culture.
Spicer, 48, was born in Portland and attended Gladstone High School. She graduated from Portland State University and has a master’s of business administration from the University of Portland. She will split her time between Portland and Bellevue, Wash., until her son graduates from high school there next year.
One of her duties as president: renovate the historic Southeast Portland building that Yale Union gave to the organization in 2020. It co-managed the space until 2021, when Yale Union dissolved as a nonprofit. The building, located at Southeast 10th Avenue and Belmont Street, has slowly started becoming the hub where Spicer and the NACF staff of about a dozen works.
“This building it is still in rough form, but we have a lot of wonderful plans for renovation,” Spicer says. “It’s super exciting to create a space that is available to the public and support our artists in a way that we never have been able to before.”
Spicer has been a consultant, worked in global operations at Nike, and has tribal government leadership experience, serving as executive director of the Suquamish Tribe.
She was drawn to the position at NACF, in part, because her brother Toma Villa is a Portland artist. Villa is currently working on the mural Sky Fox at Artists Repertory Theatre with Blaine Fontana.
“He is an inspiration as to how I have a passion to care for the resources available to our native artists and culture-keepers,” she says.