CVNMEF Board Director
Ms. Theresa Pasqual, a member of Acoma Pueblo, currently serves as Project Director for the Chaco Heritage Tribal Association. Her career experience includes working as Director at the Acoma Historic Preservation Office, and Tribal Liaison for the Department of Interior, Office of Water and Science in Washington D.C.
Theresa’s active engagement with community has allowed her to work with Pueblos and Tribes in the southwest, addressing threats to both cultural and natural resources. Ms. Pasqual’s ability to build partnerships led to the multi-Tribal nomination of 400,000 square acres of Mt. Taylor as a Traditional Cultural Property to the NM Register of Historic Places. Its listing upheld by the NM Supreme Court remains today an example of community empowerment, strategic coalition building, and elevating voice that has become a template for other such designations.
Having been raised among her beloved mountains and sandstone mesas of Acoma, Theresa continues to work in areas of environmental protection, conservation, history and equity, to raise awareness of the critical need to protect the resources that make New Mexico home. Ms. Pasqual serves as the Board President of Conservation Voters New Mexico, Advisor to the National Trust for Historic Preservation and Crow Canyon Archaeological Center. She was named a W.K. Kellogg Leadership Fellow and received a Tribal Heritage Award from the state of New Mexico for her work with Tribes and the preservation of Tribal languages. Theresa continues to live in Acoma Pueblo tending to gardens and fields, always hopeful that the summer rains will return and blessings follow.