Relational frameworks and strategy
We co-design frameworks that align community values with practical implementation. Our work helps Nations and partners make decisions that strengthen relationships and unlock long-term prosperity.
Centre for Native Nation Builders
Designing future proof Nations, businesses, and partnerships, guided by relationships, powered by strategy, built for the next 150 years.
We’re not a consultancy, we’re a movement for Nation led change.
The Centre for Native Nation Builders works with First Nations, Indigenous organizations, Governments, and values aligned partners across the private and public sectors to transform how we plan, build, and lead together.
We design new models for community, partnerships, governance, investment, and entrepreneurship that build shared systems of decision making and long term partnership, reconciliation as it was always meant to be: real, relational, and lasting.
Our work is grounded in relationships and powered by strategy, technology, and action, breaking down silos and creating systems built to last generations.
Build Native 2.0 — A Return Home
Born in big tech, rebuilt by community.
We’re relaunching a community-centred entrepreneurship program connecting First Nations creators and businesses with the right tools, training, and partners across Canada, the United States, Hawai‘i, and Aotearoa New Zealand.
Community, Entrepreneurship, and Shared Prosperity
Real reconciliation happens through shared systems, building economies, opportunities, and communities that last generations.
Entrepreneurship & Economic Development
We support entrepreneurs and Nations in building sustainable business models, access to capital, and digital tools, turning ideas into enterprises that create intergenerational wealth.
Partnerships & Capacity Building
We connect First Nations, public institutions, and industry in relationships that share responsibility, knowledge, and economic outcomes, capacity building that moves beyond consultation.
Education & Knowledge
We deliver workshops, speaking, and research rooted in lived experience, bridging business, governance, and community systems for those ready to learn new ways of leading together.
Tracy & Roux Ridler, UNESCO’s Transforming Mentalities, Paris, France 2024
Meet the Founder
Tracy Ridler is Tsimshian from the Kitsumkalum First Nation and the founder of the Centre for Native Nation Builders. She was one of the founders of Build Native with Shopify, an Indigenous-led and managed program that has supported thousands of First Nations entrepreneurs across Canada, the United States, Hawai‘i, and Aotearoa New Zealand.
She is also a PhD Candidate, focused on how innovation and entrepreneurship build community and create new models where First Nations define and lead their own futures. As a mother to three beautiful Tsimshian Nation members living and working in Vancouver, Tracy’s work remains deeply personal and grounded in the responsibility to future generations.
With experience across provincial ministries, the federal government, and international platforms including the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women, UN ESCAP, and UNESCO’s Transforming Mentalities program, she connects local realities with global transformation.
Through storytelling, relational frameworks, and strategic planning, Tracy drives radical, unapologetic change that ensures First Nations lead on our own terms. She believes reconciliation has too often been commodified into a “rent-a-feather” practice, her work redefines it as something lived, built, and walked together in community.