Co-director Linda Coombs (Aquinnah Wampanoag) is the Program Director at the Aquinnah Cultural Center and presents classes on Wampanoag history and culture to tribal members for the Tribal Historic Preservation Office. Coombs is a well-known teacher, museum professional and consultant on Wampanoag history. Her museum experience includes over 30 years of work with Plimoth Plantation, most recently as Director of the Wampanoag Center for Bicultural History from 2008-2010. From 1984-1995 she worked as the Native American Developer at the Boston Children's Museum where she developed exhibits, kits, curricula, and teacher workshop, trained interpreters, and served as a faculty member for summer institutes on Wampanoag history at the Museum's Teacher Center. Coombs is also a practicing artist, noted for her beadwork, twined bag and sash weaving, traditional deerskin regalia and leatherwork with painted decoration. She served as co-director of the 2017 Summer Institute for Teachers on Teaching Native American Histories.

Co-director Alice Nash (University of Massachusetts Amherst) earned her Ph.D. in History from Columbia University (1997). She has published numerous articles on northeastern Native American history including three in French translation in the leading Quebec journal Recherches amérindiennes au Québec. With Christoph Strobel, she co-authored Daily Life of Native Americans from Post-Columbian through Nineteenth Century America (Greenwood, 2006). She is a co-editor with Olaf Kaltmeier, Josef Raab, Michael Stewart Foley, Stefan Rinke and Mario Rufer of The Routledge Handbook on the History and Society of the Americas: Inter-American Perspectives, to be published in 2018. She has been director or co-director of three Summer Institutes for Teachers funded by NEH (2013, 2015, 2017).

The Directors share responsibility for the intellectual content of the Institute. Together and separately, depending on the topic, they will give presentations, lead discussions and workshops, and meet separately with the Summer Scholars, as appropriate.