Okrand worked with Native American languages. He earned a bachelor's degree from the University of California, Santa Cruz in 1972. His 1977 doctoral work from the University of California, Berkeley, was on the grammar of Mutsun, a dialect of Ohlone (a.k.a. Southern Costanoan). Southern Costanoan is an extinct Utian language earlier spoken in the north central Californian coastal areas from Northern Costanoan down to 30 miles south of Salinas. Okrand's doctoral work was watched over by early linguist Mary Haas. He taught college linguistics courses at the University of California, Santa Barbara, from 1975 to 1978. After that he took a post doctoral fellowship at the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C., in 1978.