Carrie F. Whitlow

Carrie F. Whitlow is a citizen of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes of Oklahoma as well as a descendant of the Kiowa and Muscogee Creek Tribes.  She is the daughter of Dara Frankling and the late Billy Whitlow.  Her maternal grandparents are the late Arapaho Chief Virgil Franklin, Sr. and Violet Bernice Youngbear Franklin, and paternal grandparents are the late Willliam Joseph Whitlow and Geraldine Tallbull Morton.  She currently resides in El Reno, Oklahoma with her family.   

Ms. Whitlow recently earned her PhD degree in Adult Learning and Leadership from Kansas State University.  Her dissertation is entitled, “All good roads lead to Concho: Indigenous women, leadership, and the Cheyenne and Arapaho department of education.”  Her study extends the work of Dr. Henrietta Mann (1997), using Indigenous storywork that focuses on how the Cheyenne and Arapaho Department of Education has built capacity and asserted sovereignty over decades of time, with a focus on the leadership stories and experiences of six Cheyenne and Arapaho female educational leaders. 

Carrie’s research interests include tribal education departments (TEDs)/tribal education agencies (TEAs), Indigenous feminism, Indigenous female leadership, and rural education.  Her work has been included in The Rural Educator and books Unsettling Settler-Colonial Education, Sharing Leadership Stories in Rural Education: Leading Rurally Across Australia and the United States, and Research in Social Studies Education.   

Carrie has served as the Executive Director for the Cheyenne and Arapaho Department of Education since 2015.  She has served in a management/leadership capacity for the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes for almost 20 years.  Additionally, Ms. Whitlow served as an adjunct instructor for the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribal College and taught the following courses: Cheyenne and Arapaho History, American Indian Women, and Current Issues. 

Ms. Whitlow is a member of the Tribal Education Departments of National Assembly (TEDNA), National Indian Education Association (NIEA), Oklahoma Council for Indian Education (OCIE), American Education Research Association (AERA), and the University Council for Educational Administration (UCEA).  She currently serves as a school board member for Riverside Indian School and is the Treasurer for the TEDNA Board Executive Committee.