Umatilla NYU student building financial literacy app
Summer Wildbill is tackling financial literacy, starting with an app she is developing with the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation’s Nixyáawii Community Financial Services. She hopes other Native youth can use it to feel empowered when it comes to their own finances. The post Umatilla NYU student building financial literacy app appeared first on ICT.
After living in the same house in Pendleton, Oregon for the first 18 years of her life, Summer Wildbill took a big leap post high school graduation in 2023, by moving across the country to study international relations at New York University (NYU).
“My senior year self went in really confident that it was not going to phase me at all, and I could just do a really smooth transition from reservation to the city, which was not true,” said Wildbill, a citizen of the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation.
She quickly noticed a gap in her education when it came to financial literacy and how to manage money. As she dove into research for herself, she found that this was a bigger need that she could help meet for other young Native people back home. She wanted to create a platform to help others learn about finances in an accessible way. Now, Wildbill is developing a financial literacy app in collaboration with her tribe via Nixyáawii Community Financial Services.
Wildbill is heading into senior year this fall. Post graduation, she dreams of attending law school. She hopes to focus on Indigenous economic development on an international level.
“I’m really interested in working first with my community in economic development, and then moving more towards a federal level, and learning community specific needs, and then how that’s translated at a federal level and into policy,” Wildbill said. “And then my ultimate goal would be taking all the perspectives and being able to look at policy on an international level, especially modern, Indigenous economic development.”
Though still in undergrad, her career thus far has focused on economic development — through a study abroad program in Argentina, an internship with the United Nations and as a 2026 Champion for Change through the Center for Native American Youth, focusing her project on financial literacy. She was also a 2024 Remembering our Sisters Fellow.
In part because of those accomplishments, Wildbill was recently announced as a recipient for two prestigious scholarships.
In mid-April, Wildbill learned that she was selected as a 2026 Truman Scholarship recipient. One of 55 selected applicants, students had to be nominated by their institutions for demonstrating leadership, public service and academic achievement.
A few days after learning about the Truman Scholarship, Wildbill also learned that she was selected for a 2026 Udall Scholarship. The scholarship aims to highlight “future leaders in environmental, Tribal public policy and health care fields.”
“I can get so caught up in doing all the work,” Wildbill said. “[Applying for scholarships] gives me a moment to reflect on everything I’ve done and like how it’s kind of compounded over time. So that’s been really rewarding in those processes. I’m very grateful for it.”
Her work continues to inspire others in her family, like her younger sister, Claire Wildbill, who is currently a sophomore at the University of Southern California.
Claire remembers dreaming with her sister about attending school in a big city one day.
“I didn’t believe that it could actually be possible until Summer was accepted to NYU,” Claire Wildbill said. “Her going out there and being the first one in our family to do that and get accepted, get scholarships, definitely inspired me to also pursue that for myself, because her doing it showed me that I could do it as well.”
Being surrounded by people in a big city at school in New York, some with access to huge amounts of money, Wildbill began to think about her own financial situation. Through podcasts, books and articles, she dove into learning about financial literacy through topics like savings and investment.
This personal research quickly evolved as she realized that this information could become helpful to other young Native people.
Wildbill is part of the university’s Martin Luther King Jr. Scholars Program that focuses on social justice and advocacy work. As part of the program, scholars are awarded a stipend each summer to conduct research on a topic related to social justice.
Noticing the gap between herself and other students at NYU who had more money, Wildbill formulated a series of research questions for herself: Why, specifically on reservations, is financial literacy so low? With all the different financial apps and curriculum already out there, what is failing minority groups, specifically reservations, when it comes to financial literacy?
The summer between her freshman and sophomore year, Wildbill began working with Nixyáawii Community Financial Services, the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation’s CDFI, to tackle this research.
“The main gap was it wasn’t actually targeting any of the emotional aspects of money, which I think is the most crucial point, especially as Native Americans, who have very strong not only historical traumas with money, but also they’re very cyclical patterns,” Wildbill said.
Using her research, Wildbill is now in the process of helping to develop a financial literacy app called NativeCents with Nixyáawii Community Financial Services and Cayuse Native Solutions.
