SRCD Indigenous Caucus Leadership
SRCD Indigenous Caucus Governing Council: 2025-2027
Chair: Dr. Maung Ting Nyeu (2025-2027)
Maung Ting Nyeu is an Indigenous scholar from Chittagong Hill Tracts, Bangladesh, and an Assistant Professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara. His research examines Indigenous knowledge systems and ways of knowing, language revitalization, oral storytelling traditions, culturally responsive pedagogy, and Indigenous child development. He also explores the ethical and cultural implications of Artificial Intelligence in Indigenous contexts. Grounded in strength-based, culturally responsive, and community-centered methodologies, his work seeks to advance pedagogies that promote equity and improve learning outcomes for Indigenous and refugee children. He has collaborated with Indigenous communities across multiple continents, particularly in the Global South.
An award-winning author, Maung Ting Nyeu has written ten children’s books in multiple Indigenous languages and two multilingual picture dictionaries. His scholarship and community-engaged work have been featured at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, the Harvard Lakshmi Mittal and Family South Asia Institute, the Peabody Museum, the United Nations, the Smithsonian Institution, and the National Geographic Society.
Maung Ting Nyeu earned two master’s degrees and a doctorate from Harvard University.
Secretary: Dr. Meenakshi Richardson (2025-2027)
Meenakshi Richardson, PhD, MS MPH (she, her, hers) is a citizen of the Haliwa-Saponi Tribe and of Indo-Fijian descent. She has worked alongside both reservation-based and urban Indigenous communities, government entities, and community-based organizations serving diverse populations to provide health and human services, community-based participatory research, and Indigenous informed systems of care. She engages and advocates for reciprocal collaborations through decolonial praxis to address intergenerational trauma, health equity, and social justice. Her research interests involve trauma transmission prevention among Indigenous populations and communities of color via kinship systems, caregover-child relationships, traditional healing modalities, and protective socio-ecological determinants of health to address various behavioral health outcomes such a substance use, suicide, and toxic stress through trauma-informed, culturally grounded prevention, and strength-based intervention strategies that center Indigenous knowledge and methodologies. She is currently an Assistant Scientist at the Center for Indigenous Health at Johns Hopkins University.
Treasurer Dr. Alexis Merculief (2025-2027)
Dr. Alexis Merculief is an Assistant Professor of Child Behavioral Health at the Ballmer Institute on University of Oregon's Portland campus. Alexis earned her MS and PhD in Human Development and Family Studies from Oregon State University, and was an inaugural member of the E3 Equity in Early Childhood Education postdoctoral fellowship at the Stanford Center on Early Childhood. Alexis is an Unangax (Aleut) tribal member and previously worked to promote education, health, and cultural connection for AI/AN children through youth program development at an urban AI/AN health organization in the Northwest.
Alexis is passionate about supporting the mental, physical, emotional, spiritual, cognitive, and behavioral health of young children from American Indian, Alaska Native (AI/AN), and other underserved populations. Alexis' work also supports the wellbeing of early childhood educators and investigates how to increase equity in early childhood education spaces.