Directly out of college, Warrior became the director of social services for
Head Start for six counties in Kansas. Later in 1971, she became the Director of Indian Education for Albuquerque schools and served until 1987. The district contained 117 schools with approximately 3,300 Indian students from over 100 tribes. She became the first and only (to date) female Chairman of the
Otoe-Missouria Tribe from 1989–1992. In this position, Warrior dealt with issues of roads/transportation, environmental concerns, health, and public safety. From 1993 to 1998, Warrior served the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA) first, as Acting Director of Development, and then as Director of Development. In 1998, Warrior became the President of the
Institute of American Indian Arts and served in this role until 2006. She established a permanent campus for the institution after a 38-year period of temporary housing. Warrior increased funding by three hundred percent, helping to raise over one hundred million dollars over a 12-year time period. In June 2013, Warrior was selected as the Director of the
Museum of Indian Arts and Culture (MIAC) in Santa Fe, New Mexico, becoming the first woman and the first Native American to serve as the museum's director. She retired in 2021, having created a significant expansion of the Museum's education department and its remote programs, and having overseen more than 30 exhibitions, including the revision of the Museum's core exhibit,
Here, Now and Always which opened in 2022. Following retirement from MIAC, Warrior became President and CEO of the Multi-Indigenous Collaborative for Action (MICA Group), an organization she co-founded with
Wilma Mankiller in 2006 and which recently administered a $10 million Cultural Resource Fund for cultural heritage preservation projects for tribes and tribal communities. Since 2006, ==Personal life==