Change Labs’ new Shiprock ‘E-Ship Hub’ supports Diné, Native entrepreneurs

TÓNANEESDIZÍ

A new business hub is opening in Shiprock to help Native American entrepreneurs build strong, self-sustaining businesses without having to leave their homelands.

Change Labs, a Native-led nonprofit, will open its second ‘E-ship Hub’ today, July 18, 2025. The hub will provide workspace, internet, coaching, loans, and workshops to support new and growing local businesses.

The 2,000-square-foot facility is in the Tsé Bit’ą’í Shopping Center. It features a shared work area with desks and high-speed internet, an 8-person meeting room, printers, and a small business library. On-site staff will provide coaching and support. Regular workshops will cover marketing, finance, and loan readiness.

“Opening the Shiprock E-ship Hub is a huge moment for Change Labs and for our community,” said Heather Fleming, Diné, the executive director of Change Labs. “We know how hard it is to start a business out here, because we’ve lived it. This hub is about backing our Native entrepreneurs with the space, support, and belief they deserve.”

The Shiprock hub builds on Change Labs’ first location in Tuba City, which is 1,400 square feet and opened in 2023. That site now sees more than 1,000 visitors each year for coworking, events, and business training.

Shiprock location brings services closer to home

While the Tuba City location has been a vital resource, its reach is limited, said Fleming.

“It’s pretty inaccessible to people traveling from New Mexico or Colorado,” she said. “So Shiprock, for us, was to help us increase our accessibility to entrepreneurs across Navajo and the Four Corners.”

With the new hub, she said, Change Labs is building spaces where Native entrepreneurs can develop their ideas, grow their ventures, and stay rooted in their communities without having to move to border towns or urban centers.

Board member Jackson Brossy, the former assistant administrator at the U.S. Small Business Administration, called the new hub “a model for what we need more of across Indian Country.”

“The Shiprock E-ship Hub represents what’s possible when Native people invest in Native entrepreneurs,” he said. “Change Labs is showing the Nation – and the country – what it looks like to build from within.”

A public grand opening is scheduled for today, July 18. A pitch competition begins at 1 p.m., followed by a ribbon-cutting and open house at 4 p.m. Sponsors include Bashas’, Wells Fargo, and Nusenda Credit Union of Albuquerque.

A return to roots, with an eye toward digital growth

Change Labs traces its beginnings to Shiprock. The nonprofit was founded there in 2013 and hosted its very first event under the same name.

“We hosted our first event there that it was called ‘Change Labs,’ and it was really the emphasis to all of this work,” Fleming said. “So in many ways … it’s kind of like coming back to our roots.”

Fleming said the decision to open a second entrepreneurship hub in Shiprock is also tied to data. A 2012 study showed that Farmington remains a major commercial center for Navajo shoppers, drawing business, jobs, and retail spending from nearby communities.

“In the sense that Farmington reaps the most sales tax benefit from Navajo consumers,” she said. “There’s a reason that Change Labs chose the two largest Navajo communities, Tuba City and Shiprock, to try and base its operations … to promote entrepreneurship and support the businesses that are starting in those communities, because we have such economic leakage issues in both of those areas.”

The organization once identified six possible sites for future hubs across the Nation. However, Fleming said, that assessment came before the pandemic altered how people engage.

“At that time (pre-Covid), the community expected Change Labs to do everything in person,” she said. “We found that in a post-Covid world, now the expectation is the opposite. Everybody wants a Zoom link; they want us to call them, versus them driving over to meet in person.”

Even so, the long-term goal remains: to establish six hubs across the Navajo Nation, so no one has to travel more than 90 minutes to access support.

“But we’re balancing that goal against the greater acceptance and demand for digital services,” Fleming said. “It does diminish the urgency around physical entrepreneurship hubs, and we have to weigh that, of course, with the cost—finding land or waiting for leases to open up. It just takes a lot of capacity and time on our side.”

For now, she said, “We’re really leaning in to hybrid events and leaning in to virtual services.”

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