Marlene Glass Ballard is an enrolled United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee Indians in Oklahoma (UKB) tribal member. She is a native first-language speaker and a UKB certified language instructor. Marlene is both fluent and literate in the Keetoowah Cherokee language. She is currently working with the UKB John Hair Cultural Center Keetoowah Language Revitalization Project as a language curriculum developer, translator, and instructor. As part of the language revitalization project, Marlene is collecting traditional short stories as remembered and told by family and tribal elders.

Jeffrey Bourns, PhD, is an Affiliate Research Scientist in Linguistics at Northeastern University and the former Project Linguist for DAILP. His current research focuses on the linguistic history of Cherokee and the philological treatment of early Cherokee texts.

Joel Dunham is a Software Developer at Artefactual Systems, Inc. who works on linguistic data management software and digital preservation software. He also works at Concordia University where he builds and maintains the Online Linguistic Database (OLD), an open-source software application that facilitates the collaborative management, analysis, and sharing of linguistic data.

Aparna Dutta was a linguist on the DAILP team, working primarily with the transcription, translation, and annotation of original Cherokee manuscripts into an online format. She joined the DAILP team in the spring of 2020 and continues to focus on working directly with language data. Aparna is interested in natural language processing with low-resource languages, and the applications of computational linguistics on language documentation and revitalization.

Gibby Free works primarily on the transcription, translation, and annotation of Cherokee language data. She has previously completed research related to textual analysis tools, and is interested in research related to text classification and summarization. Outside of DAILP, Gibby is a software engineer, and enjoys empowering marginalized communities by connecting them with powerful technical tools.

Jackie Lincroft was a Research Assistant/Software Engineer working on the main DAILP website. She is majoring in Computer Science and Linguistics and loves incorporating technical skills with interdisciplinary research, working with data, and thinking about how language can be represented digitally.

Brad Montgomery-Anderson is an Assistant Professor of English at Colorado Mesa University in Colorado. His research focuses on Cherokee language, Mayan languages, and language revitalization. His recent book, the Cherokee Reference Grammar, won the Leonard Bloomfield Book Award for 2017.

Shashwat Patel was an Interdisciplinary Software Engineer with DAILP. He worked mainly on the website’s interface and presentation of various information. He enjoys using software and code to both represent and break down words. In the future he wants to continue working with software development, especially in mobile or web applications. He is also interested in economics.

Kush Patel was a Web Content Developer for DAILP. He focused on developing and improving the user interface for the main DAILP website. Kush is majoring in Computer Science and Business Administration and is hoping to pursue a career in project management.

Shelby Snead was the Lead Computational Linguist and UX Designer for DAILP. They managed the technical team and oversaw the digital infrastructure for the project. Shelby is founding Software Engineer at Class Companion. They have extensive software engineering experience and are passionate about free software, bringing that expertise to language documentation. Shelby is especially interested in integrating a people-first understanding of cultural practices into digital philology and linguistics.

Henry Volchonok was the project’s Web Content Developer and Applied Linguist. He has been focusing on redeveloping our brand image and updating the way we present and integrate our collections with incoming curricular materials. In the future, he hopes to continue working on applied linguistics, specifically in either community-based or forensic contexts.

Hazelyn Aroian was DAILP’s Web Content Developer for the Cherokees Writing the Keetoowah Way digital edition project. She also contributed to maintenance of the main DAILP website with experience in WordPress and graphic design.

Kilie Goins is a citizen of the Cherokee Nation and a student at the University of Oklahoma studying Linguistics and Information Studies. For DAILP, she focused on processing raw audio of Cherokee speakers reading each document to create a richer learning experience for language learners utilizing the site. Her current research focuses on the Cherokee language from a learner’s and scholarly perspective, and she works in the Native American Languages collection at the Sam Noble Museum of Natural History. In the future, she hopes to continue her work with the Cherokee language, focusing on archival linguistics and the interactions between orthography and language learning.

Charlie McVicker began working with DAILP as a Cherokee audio annotator in Fall 2022 and was a member of DAILP’s software development team from early 2023. As a Cherokee Nation citizen, Cherokee second-language learner, and software developer, Charlie has been interested in creating free language learning materials since Summer 2022, when s/he started the Cherokee Language Exercises project, a free website which allows users to practice their language with publicly licensed first-language speaker audio through flashcards and minigames. S/he completed an undergraduate program in Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies at Union College. Her undergraduate thesis work focuses on importing frameworks from Queer Theory and (Trans)Gender Studies into projects of theorizing and reclaiming Native Identity and Language in digital spaces. S/he is currently teaching and learning in the Cherokee Language Mentor Apprentice Program in Tahelquah, OK.

Victor Hugo Mendevil began working with DAILP in Summer 2022 as a Web Content Writer and Editor, primarily focusing on storytelling, communications, and transparency on DAILP’s latest ventures and accomplishments, and is a doctoral student in Northeastern University’s PhD in English program in Boston. Originally from Seattle, Victor is a direct descendant of the Siksika people with family hailing from the Blackfeet Nation of Montana. He holds an MA in English from Northeastern University, an MFA in Creative Writing from Hofstra University, and a BA in English Language, Literature & Creative Writing from the University of Washington. His research interests pertain to Indigenous literature and storytelling, narrative medicine, disability studies, and creative writing.

Chanmi Oh was an Interdisciplinary Software Engineer with DAILP as well as a Computer Science and Cognitive Science who pursued a career in human-computer interaction design. She is interested in creating user-friendly technology and contributed to DAILP’s front-end interfaces. Chanmi was always glad to support representation of indigenous communities with accessibility in mind!

Melissa Torres worked on the initial linguistic annotation for DAILP, contributing to the morphemic segmentation and glossing of Cherokee words. She was a combined Psychology and Linguistics major pursued a career in either speech pathology or social work.

Roy Boney, Jr. Roy Boney, Jr. ᎧᏂᎦ ᎪᎳᎭ is an award-winning Cherokee artist, filmmaker, illustrator and writer from Tahlequah, OK. He has a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Graphic Design from Oklahoma State University and a Master of Art in Studio Art from the University of Arkansas – Little Rock. He is a Cherokee National Treasure for painting and was designated a Master Artist by the Five Civilized Tribes Museum. His work combines Cherokee language and culture with influences from popular culture. He served as Cherokee Nation language program manager for over a decade before transitioning to Cherokee Film as a Cherokee Language Film and Media Producer. As a member of our Advisory Board, he noted how best to integrate our tools and training into existing language learning programs, and how to design systems and outreach so that they correspond to the needs and opportunities in the community.

Hiroto Uchihara is Associate Professor in the Graduate School of Global Studies at the Tokyo University of Foreign Studies. He contributed greatly to our lexical data, and his book, Tone and Accent in Oklahoma Cherokee, is a crucial resource for our project. As a member of our Advisory Board, his expertise with Cherokee linguistics was essential in ensuring the quality of our linguistic data and approaches.

George Miles was the Curator of the Western Americana Collection at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University. His responsibilities included acquisition and supervision of materials, as well as education about them.

Patrick Murray-John is Senior Digital Productions Developer in the Digital Scholarship Group (DSG) at Northeastern University. At DSG, he was responsible for leading the development of CERES, and he brought expertise in open-source software development, user interface, and experience design. For DAILP, he helped to lead enhancements to CERES.

Sarah Sweeney is the Head of the Digital Production Services (DPS) department in the Northeastern University library. She is responsible for digitizing physical materials and describing digital objects. Sarah, along with others in DPS, helps to manage and maintain Northeastern’s Digital Repository Service (DRS). The DRS is the primary storage and discovery tool for Northeastern University’s digital assets, which includes documents, photographs, and audio and video files from various Northeastern units. She is skilled in various digital metadata tools, practices, and standards, such as metadata schemas, ontologies, and content modeling. She is also skilled in data transformation tools, such as XSLT, XPath, and OpenRefine, as well as some languages for processing data, like SQL and Python.

Bobbie Gail Scott Smith is a full-blood, bilingual Cherokee from the Rocky Mountain Community of Adair County, Stilwell, Oklahoma. Cherokee is her first language.  She is former First Lady of the Cherokee Nation and Miss Cherokee. She has taught Cherokee for several years in various communities and universities, including Rogers State University, Broken Arrow Community College,  Bacone College, and, Northeastern State University.