Jaeden King had been planning the MLCV Fall Feast for months. She had managed the logistics, coordinated the details, done everything a Community Engagement Officer is supposed to do.
But standing on stage and looking out at a room full of hundreds of people — the entire Mille Lacs reservation gathered for a Thanksgiving dinner — something shifted.
“Once I got on stage and looked out, I realized I was looking at tables full of aunties, cousins and other relatives and friends,” she says, laughing a little at how quickly the nerves dissolved. “When you say ‘community engagement,’ it sounds intimidating. But the community is just the people I grew up with. They all know me. I know them.”
That’s when the biggest project of her young career stopped feeling like a project at all.
“It’s really hard to fail when you have a whole room — and whole community — of people who want you to succeed.”
Jaeden grew up on the Mille Lacs reservation, attended Onamia High School, and spent her childhood with a perfectly reasonable misunderstanding of the organization she would one day work for.
“Growing up, the corporate building was just… that’s what it was,” she admits. “All I knew was that they ran the casinos. In my head, it was just suits — another business in the world. I had no clue that it was built for Band members, that it was for the community. I had no idea what opportunities existed for Band members like me on the inside of that building, and across the MLCV portfolio of companies.”
She’s not embarrassed by this. She thinks it’s important to say out loud — because she’s pretty sure she’s not the only Band member who still thinks that way. And closing that gap, she now believes, is exactly what her role exists to do.
— Jaeden King | Community Engagement Officer, MLCV & Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe Tribal Member
At 14-years-old, Jaeden began her work with the tribe in the tribal youth employment program, known as the Wiidoo Program.
The summer Jaeden was 15, she started working as a cashier at the Grand Market. She knew MLCV owned it. That was about the extent of her understanding.
Two years later, something changed. A handful of students at Onamia High School got called to the office. Leaders from MLCV were there, telling the students about the MLCV Student Internship Program — professional development, shadowing executives, learning about the businesses. “There’s not much to do around here in the summertime,” Jaeden says with a grin. “So when they have summer programs, a lot of us just jump at every opportunity.”
That summer, she was participating in three programs back to back: the MLCV internship from 9 to 1, a tribal youth employment program from 1 to 4, and her shift at the Grand Market from 4 to 8. “I was hustling,” she says. “But it was fun.”
The internship, though, was different. In four weeks, Jaeden learned what MLCV actually was: a company built for Band member employment, where every business success flows back into the well-being of the community.
A speaker came and talked about purpose and building better futures. And something that had felt terrifying — going to college, moving away — started to feel like a beginning instead of an ending.
“I realized: I can go out and chase my dreams and come back home,” she says. “That’s what gets me up in the morning. Knowing what I do is helping my people.”
She put this new purpose and path directly into practice, later serving as a legislative office intern under the Secretary and Treasurer in 2016, before working at SLOTCO (an MLCV portfolio company), as well as within MLCV in the Strategic Initiatives, People and Culture departments as an intern during college.
Jaeden enrolled at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities. She went in thinking she’d study marketing, but her path shifted after a conversation with then-mentor Aarik Robertson, who advised her to study something she was passionate about, get the best grades she could, and then go back for a business degree.
She graduated in 2024 with a degree in American Indian Studies and a degree in Ojibwe Language. It wasn’t a detour from business. It was the foundation for it. Understanding tribal sovereignty, treaty history, and policy — how that shapes the legal and economic landscape MLCV operates in — turned out to be the most strategic preparation she could have chosen.
But coming home after graduation carried its own kind of anxiety. She had moved to Minneapolis. She had been gone. Would people even remember her?
Her answer came at her first MLCV Elder event as a returning employee. Her manager called her out in the room. She introduced herself in the Ojibwe language, told them she had graduated and returned home. And the room — 150 elders she hadn’t seen in years — erupted in applause.
“Welcome home,” they said.
“It made it all so worth it,” she says. “Whenever I’m having a hard day — it’s really grounding to remember my Tribal community. The people who matter are out there, not behind this desk. That’s who I’m doing it for.”
“The Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe Elders welcomed me home. It made all of my hard work at college, and my decision to return to my community to support its continued growth, so worth it.”
There’s a good chance you’ve already encountered Jaeden King — you just didn’t know it was her.
She is a voice actress for Rosetta Stone’s Ojibwe language curriculum. She gets recognized at the grocery store. “They’ll be like, ‘Hey, that’s the girl from Rosetta Stone,’ and I’ll be like, oh geez,” she says. She finds it equal parts strange and wonderful.
Language preservation is personal for Jaeden in a way that’s hard to separate from everything else she does. “The language work is not a hobby, exactly, ” she says. “It’s part of who I am.” For a woman who holds degrees in both American Indian Studies and Ojibwe Language, the two threads — community, language, culture, continuity — are woven together into everything.
“The language work not a hobby, exactly. It’s a part of who I am.”
Jaeden stepped into her Community Engagement Officer role in June 2025. It’s a new position — which means she’s had the rare, daunting, and sometimes exhilarating experience of building it herself.
In practice, the role looks like: designing the community engagement calendar, planning events that range from elder gatherings to the reservation-wide Fall Feast, managing partnerships and sponsorships, and — the part she’s most excited about — planning this year’s MLCV student internship program.
“That’s a real full-circle moment for me,” she says. She’s talking about the same program that pulled her into this work at 17, the one that showed her there was a future here, that she could leave and come back. Now she gets to be on the other side of it, calling kids down from class, telling them what’s possible.
But beyond the events and the calendar, what Jaeden thinks her role is really about is trust. “The real challenge, and the real opportunity, is connecting the organization and the community, because we have different goals,” she explains. “My biggest job is building trust — through transparency, through education, and through showing up consistently.”
Jaeden continues to explain how everything is interconnected, including the importance of community engagement when working toward economic development opportunities, and building the Tribal economy. “It’s important that voices are properly heard, considered and understood on both sides of the conversation,” she says.
“The real challenge, and the real opportunity, is connecting the organization and the community, because we have different goals. My biggest job is building trust — through transparency, through education, and through showing up consistently…it’s important that voices are properly heard, considered and understood on both sides of the conversation.”
She knows what it’s like to simply not understand the organization. She lived it. Which is why she thinks she’s exactly the right person for this.
Ask Jaeden who she’s working for, and the answer comes quickly. She has more than 10 we’ehs — the Ojibwe word for godchildren — in her life. She’s a big sister. A big cousin. An auntie many times over.
“I want our businesses to thrive,” she says. “I want our youth and our community members to know there’s a place for them here. That’s what gave me a purpose — understanding that I could use my education for something meaningful.”
“I see the responsibility to maintain our company and our community thriving together. We need our smart, dedicated and passionate Band members — with heart — in theses spaces.”
And Jaeden has plans on how to continue to support her community. She intends to go back to school for an MBA — the Carlson Executive MBA program has been on her radar — and she’s open about her ambitions beyond community engagement. She’s drawn to economic development, to business operations, to the mechanics of how a portfolio of companies actually grows and sustains a community across generations. She has a word for what that mission looks like at its fullest: mino-bimaadiziwin. The good life.
If you’re a Band member reading this and you’ve thought about working for MLCV but weren’t sure, Jaeden has a message for you:
“To my fellow Band members: Take the opportunity. Take it seriously. Use it to grow personally and professionally. Keep the company’s mission in the back of your head — we’re working for a better future for our families, our neighbors, our friends.”
She knows the path looks different for everyone. Not everyone can take an internship. Not everyone has the same flexibility she had. She doesn’t want to paper over that. But she also wants every Band member — whatever their background, whatever their skill set — to know there is a seat somewhere within MLCV that was built for them.
“If you’re good with your hands, there’s work for that. If you like to be quiet in a room working with numbers, there’s a job for that. Everyone just needs to find their place.”
Jaeden’s found her purpose and her place — for her they are one in the same — and they’re both directly created by, and in support of, her community, the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe and regional neighbors.
Now she’s on a mission. And she’s just getting started.
Explore career opportunities within MLCV, and across our portfolio, in retail, hospitality, food services, and much more.
Our people keep our mission moving forward, and we are excited to celebrate a pivotal leadership transition within MLCV. We invite you to meet Nicole Sawyer, who we welcome into the role of People Officer — MLB Growth Multiplier as part of our Talent Team.
