Earlier this year, in partnership with Roanhorse Consulting LLC, UNM Rainforest Innovations hosted the Scaling Work With Indigenous Entrepreneurs event. Key stakeholders within New Mexico’s Indigenous Entrepreneurial Ecosystem convened to reflect on the New Mexico Tribal Entrepreneurship Enhancement Program (NMTEEP) and ways in which similar efforts can be built and scaled to support Indigenous entrepreneurs throughout New Mexico.
The day consisted of morning sessions, recapping NMTEEP, its model, and successes, followed by an afternoon World Café session where attendees reflected on the program model strengths as well as areas for improvement, envisioning an ideal future for Indigenous entrepreneurs in New Mexico.
Key insights from the community-driven World Café sessions and broader ecosystem analysis of the NMTEEP were collected and synthesized into a Discovery Report. The findings reveal a consistent and critical insight: Indigenous entrepreneurship is fundamentally relational, community-centered, and culturally grounded—not transactional, individualistic, or purely profit-driven. To achieve meaningful and sustainable impact, there must be a shift from isolated program delivery to intentional ecosystem design rooted in Indigenous values, long-term relationships, and community wellbeing.
Today, we are proud to launch the 2026 Discovery Report – Scaling Work with Indigenous Entrepreneurs building on the initial insights gained from the 2025 Discovery Report launched in April 2025 as a final deliverable for the three-year NMTEEP initiative funded by the U.S. Economic Development Administration April 2022 – June 2025.
A key aspect of the NMTEEP model that continues to be emphasized as an essential element to entrepreneurial ecosystem building in tribal and rural communities is the liaison role. Community-based outreach is important and reduces barriers by bringing resources directly to entrepreneurs rather than requiring travel. Relational mentorship and peer-to-peer learning are also highly valued. These approaches create spaces for shared experiences, storytelling, and practical knowledge exchange, which build trust and confidence among entrepreneurs in these communities.
UNM Rainforest Innovations continues to support bottom-up models like NMTEEP and acknowledges the importance of liaison roles as a key function and best practice for entrepreneurial economic development and ecosystem building in tribal and rural New Mexico.
The full report from the Scaling Work with Indigenous Entrepreneurs event held on March 31, 2026 can be viewed below and here: https://innovations.unm.edu/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/2026-Discovery-Report-Scaling-Work-with-Indigenous-Entrepreneurs-Final-Deliverable-web-version.pdf