Thalia Roessel
Program Development Advisor — Thalia was born and raised on the Navajo reservation. She is of the Water Flows Together People (Tó’aheedlíínii) born for the Coyote Pass People (Naaneesht’ézhí Tábaahá). She was raised with a rich Navajo culture, herding sheep with her late maternal grandmother on her family’s homeland.
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The majority of her childhood she understood adaptation when it came to having limited running water, electricity, and learning to use variations of Navajo foods for family dinners, from her late mother. She began work in Phoenix, Arizona after high school, working corporate jobs, until she followed a calling to pursue her long-time fascination with scones. After culinary school she began her business, ‘Scone On?’ in 2019. Her business has managed to flourish during the pandemic and has made a name for herself as the “Scone Lady”. In recent years she has included various other pastries with corn as a prime ingredient. While she enjoys making pastries, she dabbled into speaking engagements and found that sharing her knowledge and preparing the youth is her growing passion. She has worked with schools on the reservation to encourage and instill Indigenous Food Sovereignty. She dedicated the majority of 2023-24 to bringing communities together, whether it be on the reservation, non-profit organizations, to national television. Her work here will continue normalizing Indigenous foods to tackle the many health crises among many generations before and after us.ription text goes here