Vonne Strobbe, a Sioux and member of the Fort Peck Tribes in Poplar, Montana, has more than 40 years of experience of living and working with diverse groups across the U.S. and around the world. As a paralegal, she spent several years working at the American Indian Law Center in
Albuquerque, New Mexico before she elected to pursue a graduate program in health education. After receiving her Master of Science Degree from the University of New Mexico, she began working with the Indian Health Service (IHS) as a health educator for the SDPI CVD Demonstration Program for Indians (SDPI Healthy Heart grants). She became a Project Director for several years with SDPI Healthy Heart projects before she joined the IHS Albuquerque Area Office where she provided training and education on diabetes and cardiovascular (CVD) risk factors to the thirty-three SDPI community-directed diabetes grant programs in the Albuquerque catchment area.

After retiring from the IHS, she spent several years working as a grants administrator for the Board of Regents (BOR) office at Southwestern Indian Polytechnic Institute (SIPI) in Albuquerque. She worked extensively with the BORs family health extension grant and other grant projects relative to financial literacy education and economic development to student and tribal community populations. Vonne joined the New Mexico Department of Health’s Population and Community Health Bureau in 2017 where she was the Tribal Outreach Coordinator for the Diabetes Prevention and Control and Heart Disease and Stroke Prevention programs until she retired August 2020.