Notah Begay gives back

NOTAH BEGAY III came to Stanford to play golf, but he collected more than birdies during his stay.
Not only did he help lead the Cardinal to an NCAA Championship in 1994 and go on to win four tournaments on the PGA Tour, Begay earned a degree in economics and is putting it to great use.

In 2005. He founded the Notah Begay III (NB3) Foundation to promote better health and well-being for Native American youth. Begay, 39, is half Navajo, one-quarter San Felipe, and one-quarter Isleta and the only full-blooded Native American to play on the PGA Tour.

He founded NB3 to help fight childhood diabetes and obesity among Native American kids, and has raised more than $3.2 million through his annual NB3 Foundation Challenge Golf Event to support various programs. Former Stanford teammate and close friend Tiger Woods is a regular participant in the tournament.

Over the last three years, NB3 has reached more than 10,000 Native American children in 11 states through soccer, golf and health and wellness programs. Begay’s foundation helped the San Felipe Pueblo in New Mexico build the tribe’s first community park and soccer field.

Begay also started KivaSun Foods, a Native American company that sources products such as Native American bison, Pacific salmon, and sweet corn that tribes have sustainably farmed and fished for thousands of years. His dream is for KivaSun to become a “globally recognized brand and to reveal to a global audience what I have known my entire life: Native America’s respect for its surrounding and reverence for food produces some of the best products in the marketplace.”

Begay, who lives in Dallas with his wife and two young children, also established his own consulting business and designs golf courses. Begay’s third creation, his first signature design, Firekeeper Golf Course near Topeka, Kansas, was recently ranked the best new course in the country by Golfweek magazine.

“I always knew that having a Stanford degree as an athlete was going to serve me for the rest of my life,” said Begay. “It’s just the way the environment at Stanford encourages students to solve problems. That’s what life is and certainly business. I got be very close with the Stanford American Indian Organization and stay close with the program to this day.”

Read the full story by MARK SOLTAU on the Athletics website.