Leveraging Self with Dr. Melita “Chepa” Rank

As a woman who grew up on a reservation being half Native American and half white, she opens up about her journey to claim herself.  Chepa is totally raw and vulnerable from sharing how her name means “chubby” to the challenges of being a mom when her growing daughter was in trouble.  In this not to miss podcast, Chepa inspires all to live true to Self by claiming  “This is who I am,  I embrace who I am.  I accept who I am.”  Love yourself enough to know whatever you are going to do in the world, the most important person you have to be comfortable with is yourself.”

Dr. Melita “Chepa” Rank (Hunkpati Oyate) is the Chief Executive Officer for the Fort Thompson Indian Health Services (IHS) Health Center in South Dakota.  With a doctorate as a licensed social worker, she is passionate about transformative and innovative best practices to address grand challenges facing tribal communities and people.  She is leading the development of 

Integrated systems to foster well-being, suicide prevention in indigenous nations, and holistic services to create a culture of wellness within tribal nations.

Chepa has spent the majority of her career honored to work in public service in various capacities, primarily across tribal nations.  She began her career working with families in child protection/child welfare services, eventually transitioning to administrative roles.  Her research interests include enhancing tribal community capacity by fostering a culture of wellness, building bridges of economic and social development for tribal communities to reduce disparities, designing collective impact approaches to improve health and utilization of data for programmatic decision-making.

Dr. Rank has an Associate of Arts from Haskell Indian Jr. College, a Bachelors in Social Work from the University of Kansas, a Masters in Social Work from Florida State University and a Doctorate from the University of Southern California.  While education and work experience moved her around the nation, she was drawn back to her “native roots” to live, work and raise a family.