Sutton King, MPH
Nāēqtaw-Pianakiw, Comes First Woman
Afro-Indigenous leader, researcher, and social entrepreneur committed to advancing Indigenous health equity. Residing in the Bronx, she’s lived on the traditional territory of the Siwanoy people for fifteen years. Born in Wisconsin, she is a descendant of the Menominee and Oneida Nations of Wisconsin. Sutton is the granddaughter and direct descendant of Menominee leaders Chief Oshkosh the Brave, Chief Reginal Oshkosh, and Chief Neopit Oshkosh carrying their teachings of courage, stewardship, and balance into her life’s work.Sutton earned her bachelor’s in Psychology (minor in Sociology) and master’s in Public Health from the College of Mount Saint Vincent and the NYU School of Global Public Health. With more than a decade working across healthcare, technology, research, and philanthropy, she designs and scales culturally grounded solutions rooted in Indigenous knowledge, kinship, and right relationship.
Her leadership centers Indigenous methodologies, ethical access and benefit sharing, and decolonized models of innovation. Sutton’s work spans mental health, women’s rights, drug policy reform, and biocultural conservationaddressing inequities at their roots through culturally responsive programs and systems change. As a published researcher, her scholarship explores Indigenous evaluation frameworks, kinship-based methodologies, and the disproportionate impacts of systemic inequities on Indigenous peoples and communities of color. Sutton is the Co-Founder, President, and Executive Director of the Urban Indigenous Collective (UIC), an Indigenous-led public health nonprofit providing culturally tailored health and wellness services for self-identified Indigenous peoples across Lenapehoking (NYC) and the greater tri-state area. She is also the Co-Founder of ShockTalk, a telemental health platform fostering culturally aligned patient-provider relationships for Indigenous communities, and Co-Founder of Common Field, a network safeguarding Traditional Indigenous Knowledge in law, business, and philanthropy.
A survivor of gender-based violence Sutton leads UIC’s Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls, Trans, and Two-Spirit People (MMIWGT2S) NYC+ initiative, building research, advocacy, and public education around this crisis in urban Indigenous communities. Through her philanthropic and advisory work, Sutton partners with corporations, social impact investors, and nonprofits to advance Indigenous-led frameworks for ethical giving, equitable collaboration, and resource redistribution rooted in reciprocity. As a former member of the operations team for the Indigenous Medicine Conservation Fund (IMC Fund), she helped support a pioneering Indigenous-led philanthropic model for biocultural conservation grounded in decolonized, participatory frameworks that center Indigenous sovereignty and reciprocity.
Recognized as a NYU Female Founder, MIT Indigenous Solve Fellow, three-time NYU Ignite Fellow, and David Prize Finalist. Sutton has also been named by Business Insider as one of the 16 Women Shaping Psychedelics and among the 100 Most Influential People in Psychedelics by Psychedelic Invest and PsychedStudio. Her work has been featured in The New York Times, Forbes, ABC, Vice, Science News, and AM New York. She continues to guide national and global conversations on Indigenous health, research, and ethical innovation. Sutton is redefining what leadership and impact look like in the age of healing, innovation, and collective transformation.