SHANNON O’LOUGHLIN is a citizen of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma and the CEO and Attorney for the Association on American Indian Affairs – the oldest nonprofit serving Native Country since 1922. Shannon has been practicing law for more than 23 years and is a lecturer at Johns Hopkins University. She is a former Chief of Staff to the National Indian Gaming Commission, where she assisted in the development and implementation of national gaming policy, and oversaw the agency’s public affairs, technology, compliance and finance divisions. Shannon has also served Native Country on various economic development boards, and in the private sector​ as an attorney​, leading a large national firm’s Native Nations law practice group that worked to strengthen, maintain and protect sovereignty, self-determination and culture. Shannon was appointed by Secretary​ of the Department of the Interior, Sally Jewell to the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act Review Committee in 2013, and was appointed by President Barack Obama as the first Native American to the Cultural Property Advisory Committee within the State Department in 2015; she was fired by President Trump in 2019.

​Shannon received a B.A.​ in American Indian Studies​ from California State University, Long Beach and joint M.A. and J.D. degrees from the University of Arizona​ in Indigenous Peoples Law and Policy​.