Growing up just outside Mole Lake Reservation in northern Wisconsin, Jeff Ackley had strong connections to his Tribal heritage, culture, and history. His family was active in the Sokaogon Chippewa Community, and Ackley spent weekends at his grandparents’ home on Tribal lands, where he absorbed tradition and stewardship by learning to harvest wild rice and watching his grandfather trap muskrats.
Ackley started his career in affordable housing in 1998 as a maintenance worker for his Tribe’s housing authority. He then worked his way up through construction, administration, finance, and executive leadership and has spent the last two decades leading regional Tribal housing associations, helping develop homes across the Midwest, and connecting Native communities to national housing resources.
Now, as Enterprise’s new Native American programs director, Ackley brings his experience and deep-rooted commitment to Indian Country to our organization’s Tribal Nations work, which provides training and technical assistance, access to capital, and policy solutions that strengthen affordable housing and homeownership.
A Dual Perspective
Ackley’s resume features successful tax credit developments, housing rehab projects, and hands-on community engagement. Over the course of his career, Ackley learned to navigate two worlds, staying true to Native traditions while also adapting to the broader housing and financial sectors.
“There’s a real difference between how Tribes operate and how the business world operates,” he said. “Tribes move with purpose, with consultation, with sovereignty in mind. It doesn’t always line up with the speed of business. You have to know how to work within both.”
That dual perspective has become a powerful asset — not just in his housing work, but also in leadership roles like serving on the local school board, where he’s spent 14 years helping to foster communication between two tribal nations that share a single school district, a rare setup seen in only one other place in the country.
Ackley says he first learned about Enterprise six years ago and has come to realize “how much Enterprise can offer tribes—and how few people know that.”
Today, he’s part of a dedicated team working to extend that reach. As chair of the Great Lakes Indian Housing Association, he’s helping bring Enterprise’s tools and training to dozens of tribes in the Midwest. An upcoming academy in Oklahoma focused on housing resilience and homeownership is expanding the Tribal Nations’ geographic reach even further.
Coming Full Circle
One of the biggest opportunities? Education for both Tribal housing staff and Tribal members. “People need to know they can be homeowners,” he said. “For generations, the message has been, ‘The Tribe will take care of you.’ But now, we need to empower people to build equity, to have choices, to take pride in owning a home—on or off the reservation.”
That shift won’t come without challenges. Lending on trust land remains a complicated process, with far more paperwork and fewer financing options than conventional homeownership. But with Native-led CDFIs, new partnerships, and culturally grounded training, progress is happening.
Ackley brings it full circle when he talks about his great-grandfather, a hereditary chief and carpenter by trade, who helped his people establish their homelands and secure their future. “I didn’t realize until later how much my family had been involved in housing,” he says. “It’s funny how it all came back around.”