My journey is personal, but my work is for everyone.

Sky grew up living in both the Western world and in his own Navajo community, and has seen the positive impact of combining his knowledge from both.  A life-long overachiever, and only in his junior year of college at Drexel University, Sky’s accomplishments are intimidating – a Goldwater Scholar, a Udall Scholar, a Truman scholar, a published researcher, the founder of Drexel’s Indigenous Students of the Americas club – all are on his long list of achievements.   

What Sky has taken away from all his experiences is the concept of using both his Indigenous knowledge and his Western knowledge to approach problem-solving in new and unique ways.  As a chemistry major with plans to attend medical school, Sky is passionate about addressing the health needs of his community through using both traditional practices and Western science and constructing research supporting both.  His first-hand experience seeing his beloved grandfather beat stage 4 lung cancer using both Western and traditional medicine has inspired Sky to commit himself fully to merging his Western and Indigenous knowledge to benefit his people.   

“For me, growing up my parents have always instilled in me and my younger brothers that education is something that once you have it, nobody can take it away from you … So I think education itself, specifically now in today’s world, when people think of education, they mostly think of Western education, but for me, I have my cultural upbringing, which I consider education.  And coupled with Western education, like being at my university and studying chemistry, I feel that taking these two spheres or these two facets and really combining them has helped me become such a balanced person.”