Mary Smith, an enrolled member of the Cherokee Nation, is the first female Native American president-elect nominee of the American Bar Association, nominated for the 2022-2023 term. Her eclectic legal career spans from private practice, corporate litigation counsel, and roles in state and federal government, to serving as a former president of the National Native American Bar Association. Mary envisions a more racially and ethnically diverse legal profession. She has worked on policy and legal issues involving Native Americans, homelessness, and violence against women for the White House during the Clinton administration, and has served as principal deputy director of the Indian Health Service, an agency within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Most recently, she has helped draft resolutions considered by the ABA’s House of Delegates that urged all governments to acknowledge and prioritize responding to the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women (MMIW) crisis. A former math and computer science major in college, she is also the founder of the Caroline and Ora Smith Foundation that promotes Native American girls in the STEM fields.
