Candy Keown is a tribal member of the Hoonah Indian Association in Hoonah, Alaska. She is Tlingit and from the T’akdeintaan clan. Hoonah is located in Southeast Alaska about 45 air miles from the capital city of Juneau. Candy moved to Hoonah at the age of 10 and has kept Hoonah as her permanent home since that time. She graduated from Hoonah City Schools in 2005 at which time she left Hoonah to further her education at Stanford University. She graduated from Stanford in 2009 with a BA in Sociology and a Psychology Minor. She returned to Hoonah immediately after college in hopes of using her education to give back to her community. 

Candy spent a year and a half working at the SEARHC clinic in Hoonah as an intermittent Patient Access Representative before getting hired on at the Hoonah Indian Association as the Human Services Director in April of 2011.This position included running the General Assistance Program, the Child Care Assistance Program, and being the Indian Child Welfare Act Worker. The Indian Child Welfare Act allows the tribe to be involved in state custody cases involving member of the tribe. She has firsthand knowledge of the struggles community members face in rural Alaska. Through her position at the Hoonah Indian Association Candy was an active member of the Hoonah Fun & Fit Partnership, the Hoonah Behavioral Health and Suicide Prevention Group, Parents and Teachers Association, and the Domestic Violence Advisory Board. Candy was also working with the Domestic Violence Advisory Board to start up a programs to address the issues that women and men face in the community. 

Candy is passionate about helping make her community healthy and safe for everyone and believes the work of the Alaska Native Women’s Resource Center is necessary in order to achieve that goal.