Sphere Summit II: Speaker Bios

Charity‐​Joy Acchiardo is a senior lecturer in the Department of Economics at the University of Texas at Austin. She also serves as the executive director of the Journal of Economics Teaching. Her work in economic education is multifaceted and includes Dystopia and Economics: A Guide to Surviving Everything from the Apocalypse to Zombies; “Dismal Dating: a Student’s Guide to Romance Using the Economic Way of Thinking”; a compilation of entries at Humans of New York, which serves as a springboard for economic inquiry; her website Economics Is a Kahoot!; and many other resources dedicated to making the economics classroom more engaging. Acchiardo’s passion is sharing her joy about economics with others, and she is a frequent speaker, both domestically and internationally, at workshops for educators and students.

Thomas Berry is a research fellow in the Cato Institute’s Robert A. Levy Center for Constitutional Studies and editor‐​in‐​chief of the Cato Supreme Court Review. Before joining Cato, he was an attorney at Pacific Legal Foundation and clerked for Judge E. Grady Jolly of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.Berry’s areas of interests include the separation of powers, executive branch appointments, and First Amendment freedom of speech. Berry’s academic work has appeared in the New York University Journal of Law and Liberty, Washington and Lee Law Review Online, and Federalist Society Review.

Romina Boccia is director of budget and entitlement policy at the Cato Institute, where she specializes in federal spending, budget process, economic implications of rising debt, and Social Security and Medicare reform. Boccia was previously director of the Grover M. Hermann Center for the Federal Budget at the Heritage Foundation, where she was the principal author of the organization’s flagship budget plan: Blueprint for Balance. She also contributed chapters to the book A Fiscal Cliff: New Perspectives on the U.S. Federal Debt Crisis and the peer‐​reviewed publication Homo Oeconomicus: Journal of Behavioral and Institutional Economics. Boccia was most recently managing director at Dialog, an invite‐​‐​only, elite leadership network cofounded by Peter Thiel and Auren Hoffman that curated off‐​‐​the‐​‐​record conversations and transformative retreats for 1,000 global leaders in political, business, tech, military, creative, and academic disciplines from over 50 countries.

Anastasia Boden is the director of the Robert A. Levy Center for Constitutional Studies. Before joining the Cato Institute, Boden was a civil rights attorney at the Pacific Legal Foundation, where she led the organization’s equality and opportunityprogram. She also co‐​created the podcast Dissed, which tells the stories behind infamous Supreme Court dissents. In her decade before joining Cato, Boden represented entrepreneurs in challenges to onerous occupational licensing laws, anticompetitive titling restrictions, and Certificate of Need (CON) programs. She developed nearly a dozen cases challenging CON laws across the country, leading to legislative reform in Montana, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia. Among her other wins are a case invalidating busking restrictions in Houston, several appellate decisions opening up the courthouse doors to civil rights plaintiffs, and legislative repeal of Virginia’s happy hour advertising restrictions. Her writings on law and liberty have been featured in the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune, Forbes, and more, and she has appeared on Headline News, Reason TV, Newsmax, and John Stossel.

Vanessa Brown Calder is director of opportunity and family policy studies at the Cato Institute, where she focuses on policies that support family and increase opportunity. Previously, Calder was executive director and staff director at the U.S. Congress Joint Economic Committee (JEC), where she led the committee’s research and congressional hearing efforts under Chairman and Ranking Member Mike Lee of Utah. Prior to those roles, Calder was deputy director and senior policy adviser at JEC, a policy analyst at Cato Institute, and a graduate fellow in welfare studies at the Heritage Foundation.

Kevin Corinth is a senior fellow and the deputy director of the Center on Opportunity and Social Mobility at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), where he researches economic opportunity, social mobility, poverty, safety‐​net programs, and homelessness, among other issues. Before joining AEI, Corinth served as the staff director of the Joint Economic Committee in Congress and chief economist in the White House’s Council of Economic Advisers, where he previously served as chief economist for domestic policy and senior economist for poverty and social issues. He has also worked as executive director of the Comprehensive Income Dataset Project at the University of Chicago and as a research fellow at AEI. His research and policy work in these roles have focused on income and poverty measurement, policies to promote economic opportunity, tax policy, housing and homelessness, social capital, and strengthening evidence‐​based policymaking. Corinth has been widely published in the popular press, including in the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Washington Examiner, The Hill, and RealClearPolicy. In addition to book chapters, he has published numerous academic articles in scholarly journals and publications such as the Journal of Regional Science, Journal of Housing Economics, and Tax Notes.

Chelsea Follett is the managing editor of Human​Progress​.org, a project of the Cato Institute that seeks to educate the public on the global improvements in well‐​being by providing free empirical data on long‐​term developments. Her writing has been published in the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Newsweek, Forbes, The Hill, Business Insider, National Review, the Washington Examiner, and Global Policy Journal. She was named to Forbes’ 30 under 30 list for 2018 in the category of Law and Policy.

Annelies Goger is an economic geographer focused on developing innovative policy solutions to address rising inequality and increase access to economic opportunity. Goger’s recent work investigates how the COVID-19 pandemic has affected the hospitality industry in the United States, how to fix the unemployment insurance safety net, and how to increase access to quality jobs and investments in talent to foster ongoing learning and innovation. She is an expert in U.S. workforce development policy, global supply chains, and inclusive economic development. Goger’s work has been prominently featured on CNN, on NPR, in Washington Monthly, in The Hill, and on several podcasts and local news outlets.

Jennifer Huddleston is a technology policy research fellow at the Cato Institute. Her research focuses on the intersection of emerging technology and law with a particular interest in the interactions between technology and the administrative state. Huddleston’s work covers topics including judicial deference, liability protection for internet platforms, autonomous vehicles and other disruptive transportation technologies, the regulation of data privacy, and the benefits of technology and innovation. Her work has appeared in USA Today, the Chicago Tribune, the New York Daily News, the Sacramento Bee, the Washington Times, Real Clear Policy, and U.S. News and World Report.

Elaine C. Kamarck is a senior fellow in governance studies as well as the director of the Center for Effective Public Management at the Brookings Institution. She is an expert on American electoral politics and government innovation and reform in the United States, Organisation for Economic Co‐​operation and Development nations, and developing countries. She focuses her research on the presidential nomination system and American politics and has worked in many American presidential campaigns. Kamarck is the author of Primary Politics: Everything You Need to Know about How America Nominates Its Presidential Candidates and Why Presidents Fail and How They Can Succeed Again. She is also the author of How Change Happens—or Doesn’t: The Politics of US Public Policy and The End of Government—As We Know It: Making Public Policy Work. Kamarck is also a lecturer in public policy at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government.

Sahar Khan is a defense and foreign policy research fellow at the Cato Institute. Her research interests include state‐ sponsored militancy/​terrorism, counterterrorism policies, anti‐​terrorism legal regimes, and private military and security contractors. Khan focuses on U.S. foreign policy in South Asia and Africa. She is also the editor at Inkstick Media.

Sean Kinnard teaches Advanced Placement world history and psychology at Yorktown High School in Arlington, Virginia. He is also the general manager of the Washington Japanese Heritage (Keisho) Center, a nonprofit heritage language program for families who want to explore the language and culture of Japan. A classroom teacher for over 20 years, Kinnard has taught English as a second language and English in addition to social studies. He began his career as a Peace Corps volunteer in Guatemala and then worked in Japan for four years as an assistant language teacher with the Japan Exchange and Teaching Program. Kinnard is a National Board–certified teacher with a master’s degree in teaching from the School for International Training and a BA in international affairs from Lewis and Clark College. He lives in Arlington with his wife and two daughters.

Nicol Turner Lee is a senior fellow in governance studies and the director of the Center for Technology Innovation at the Brookings Institution and serves as coeditor‐​in‐​chief of TechTank. Turner Lee researches public policy designed to enable equitable access to technology across the United States and to harness its power to create change in communities across the world. Her work also explores global and domestic broadband deployment and internet governance issues. She is an expert on the intersection of race, wealth, and technology within the context of civic engagement, criminal justice, and economic development. Turner Lee previously served as vice president and chief research and policy officer at the Multicultural Media, Telecom and Internet Council, a national non‐​for‐​profit organization dedicated to promoting and preserving equal opportunity and civil rights in mass media, telecommunications, and broadband industries.

Scott Lincicome is the vice president of general economics and Cato’s Herbert A. Stiefel Center for Trade Policy Studies. He writes on international and domestic economic issues, including international trade; subsidies and industrial policy; manufacturing and global supply chains; and economic dynamism. Lincicome also is a senior visiting lecturer at Duke University Law School, where he has taught a course on international trade law, and he previously taught international trade policy as a visiting lecturer at Duke. Prior to joining Cato, Lincicome spent two decades practicing international trade law at White & Case LLP, where he litigated national and multilateral trade disputes and advised multinational corporations on how to optimize their transactions and business practices consistent with global trade rules and national regulations.

Robert Litan is a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, where he has previously been a senior fellow on staff and vice president and director of economic studies. His current research focuses on federal regulation, entrepreneurship, and a broad range of economic policy subjects. Litan is also a practicing attorney, specializing in complex antitrust and business litigation as a shareholder of Berger Montague, based in Philadelphia. He previously was a partner at Korein Tillery and practiced law with two Washington, DC, law firms. He served during the first term of the Clinton administration as principal deputy assistant attorney general in the Antitrust Division of the Justice Department, where he oversaw civil nonmerger litigation and the department’s positions on regulatory matters, primarily in telecommunications.

David Madland is a senior fellow and the senior adviser to the American Worker Project at American Progress. He has been called “one of the nation’s wisest” labor scholars by Washington Post columnist E. J. Dionne Jr. The president of the Service Employees International Union, Mary Kay Henry, says Madland’s work “is creating a North Star for how we increase workers’ power in the economy and democracy.” Madland is the author of Re‐​Union: How Bold Labor Reforms Can Repair, Revitalize, and Reunite the United States, which helped put sectoral bargaining on the political agenda, and Hollowed Out: Why the Economy Doesn’t Work without a Strong Middle Class, a pioneering critique of trickle‐​down economics that has helped policymakers understand that the economy grows from the middle out and bottom up—not the top down. He appears frequently on television programs, including on PBS, CNN, MSNBC, and Fox, and he is a regular guest on radio talk shows across the United States. His work has been cited in numerous publications, including the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, and the New Yorker. He has testified before Congress as well as several state legislatures.

Julia D. Mahoney teaches courses in property, government finance, constitutional law, and nonprofit organizations. A graduate of Yale Law School, she joined the University of Virginia faculty as an associate professor in 1999 and is now John S. Battle Professor of Law. She has also taught at the University of Southern California Law School and the University of Chicago Law School, and before entering the legal academy, Mahoney practiced law at the New York firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz. Her scholarly articles include works on land preservation, eminent domain, health care reform, and property rights in human biological materials.

John G. Malcolm oversees the Heritage Foundation’s work to increase understanding of the Constitution and the rule of law as vice president of the Institute for Constitutional Government, director of the think tank’s Edwin Meese III Center for Legal and Judicial Studies, and the Ed Gilbertson and Sherry Lindberg Gilbertson Senior Legal Fellow. Malcolm brings a wealth of legal expertise and experience in both the public and private sectors. Before being named director of the Meese Center in July 2013, Malcolm spearheaded the center’s rule of law programs. His research and writing as a senior legal fellow focused on criminal law, immigration, national security, religious liberty, and intellectual property.

Irshad Manji is a globally acclaimed educator, author, and speaker who founded the Moral Courage Network in 2021. Manji also lectures with Oxford University’s Initiative for Global Ethics and Human Rights. She previously served as a professor of leadership at New York University’s Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service. The recipient of Oprah’s “Chutzpah Award” for boldness, Manji is also the New York Times bestselling author of two books about the need for reform within her faith of Islam. Her latest book is Don’t Label Me: How to Do Diversity without Inflaming the Culture Wars. Manji spearheaded the Emmy‐​nominated PBS documentary Faith without Fear and launched Moral Courage TV, a YouTube channel featuring individuals who stand up when others want them to sit down.

Deirdre Nansen McCloskey is a distinguished scholar and Isaiah Berlin Chair in Liberal Thought at the Cato Institute and distinguished professor emerita of economics and of history and professor emerita of English and of communication at the University of Illinois at Chicago. After getting her PhD in economics at Harvard University, she taught at the University of Chicago and the University of Iowa. She has written 24 books and some 400 academic and popular articles on economic theory, economic history, philosophy, rhetoric, statistical theory, feminism, ethics, and law. McCloskey’s recent books include The Bourgeois Virtues: Ethics for an Age of Capitalism (University of Chicago Press, 2006), Bourgeois Dignity: Why Economics Can’t Explain the Modern World (University of Chicago Press, 2010), Bourgeois Equality: How Ideas, Not Capital or Institutions, Enriched the World (University of Chicago Press, 2016), Why Liberalism Works: How True Liberal Values Produce a Freer, More Equal, Prosperous World for All (Yale University Press, 2019), and with Art Carden, Leave Me Alone and I’ll Make You Rich: The Bourgeois Deal (University of Chicago Press, 2020).

Yascha Mounk is a writer, academic, and public speaker known for his work on the rise of populism and the crisis of liberal democracy. Mounk is an associate professor of the practice of international affairs at Johns Hopkins University, where he holds appointments in both the School of Advanced International Studies and the Agora Institute. He is also a contributing editor at The Atlantic, a senior fellow at the Councilon Foreign Relations, and the founder of the online magazine Persuasion. Mounk has written three books that have been translated into 11 languages and occasionally writes for newspapers and magazines, including the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and Foreign Affairs. He is also a regular columnist or contributor for major international publications. Mounk received a BA in history from Trinity College, Cambridge, and a PhD in government from Harvard University.

Clark Neily is senior vice president for legal studies at the Cato Institute. His areas of interest include constitutional law, overcriminalization, coercive plea bargaining, police accountability, and gun rights. Before joining Cato in 2017, Neily was a senior attorney and constitutional litigator at the Institute for Justice and director of the Institute’s Center for Judicial Engagement. Neily is an adjunct professor at George Mason’s Antonin Scalia School of Law, where he teaches constitutional litigation and public‐​interest law. He served as co‐​‐​counsel in District of Columbia v. Heller, in which the Supreme Court held that the Second Amendment protects an individual’s right to own a gun. Neily is the author of Terms of Engagement: How Our Courts Should Enforce the Constitution’s Promise of Limited Government. His writing has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, and National Review Online, as well as various law reviews, including the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy, George Mason Law Review, Georgetown Journal of Law and Public Policy, NYU Journal of Law and Liberty, and Texas Review of Law and Politics.

Alex Nowrasteh is the vice president for economic and social policy studies at the Cato Institute. His publications have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, the Washington Post, and most other major publications in the United States. Nowrasteh regularly appears on Fox News, MSNBC, Bloomberg, NPR, and numerous television and radio stations. His peer‐​reviewed academic publications have appeared in the World Bank Economic Review, the Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, Public Choice, Kyklos, and others. He has also contributed numerous book chapters to various edited volumes. Nowrasteh is the coauthor (with Benjamin Powell) of the book Wretched Refuse? The Political Economy of Immigration and Institutions (Cambridge University Press, 2020), which is the first book on how economic institutions in receiving countries adjust to immigration.

Nico Perrino is the executive vice president of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) and the creator and host of FIRE’s So to Speak: The Free Speech Podcast. Prior to his current role, he led FIRE’s communications department for nearly a decade, most recently as its senior vice president of communications. Perrino previously worked in the communications department at the Institute for Justice. His writing has been featured in the Los Angeles Times, USA Today, Politico, Newsweek, and The Guardian, and he regularly travels the country to speak about free speech and civil liberties issues. As a documentarian, Perrino was codirector and senior producer of Mighty Ira: A Civil Liberties Story (2020), a featurelength film about the life and career of former American Civil Liberties Union Executive Director Ira Glasser. He worked as creative consultant on Can We Take a Joke? (2015), a film about censorship in standup comedy.

Jonathan Rauch is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, DC. He has written eight books and many articles on public policy, culture, and government. Rauch is a contributing editor of The Atlantic and has appeared as a guest on many television and radio programs. His latest book is The Constitution of Knowledge: A Defense of Truth. Rauch is the recipient of the 2005 National Magazine Award, the magazine industry’s equivalent of the Pulitzer Prize. His additional honors include the 2010 National Headliner Award, one of the magazine industry’s most venerable prizes. In 2011, he won the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association prize for excellence in opinion writing. In 1996, he was awarded the Premio Napoli alla Stampa Estera for his coverage in The Economist of the European Parliament. Rauch was born and raised in Phoenix and graduated in 1982 from Yale University.

Molly Reynolds is a senior fellow in governance studies at the Brookings Institution. She studies Congress, with an emphasis on how congressional rules and procedure affect domestic policy outcomes. She is the author of the book Exceptions to the Rule: The Politics of Filibuster Limitations in the U.S. Senate, which explores creation, use, and consequences of the budget reconciliation process and other procedures that prevent filibusters in the U.S. Senate. Current research projects include work on oversight in the House of Representatives, congressional reform, and the congressional budget process. She also supervises the maintenance of Vital Statistics on Congress, Brookings’slong-running resource on the first branch of government.

David Rivkin is a member of BakerHostetler’s litigation, international, and environmental teams and serves as the firm’s appellate and major motions team co‐​leader. He has extensive experience in constitutional, administrative, and international law litigation and has been involved in numerous high‐​profile cases. With his prior experience in the government sector, Rivkin draws on a wealth of knowledge when providing compliance advice to companies and handling enforcement proceedings before government agencies on issues arising out of multilateral and unilateral sanctions, the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, anti‐​boycott issues, bankruptcy and financial fraud matters, and environmental and energy issues. Rivkin has developed and implemented legislative, regulatory, and litigation initiatives for two presidential administrations. Over the years, he has published hundreds of articles, op‐​eds, book reviews, and book chapters on a variety of international, legal, constitutional, defense, arms control, foreign policy, environmental, and energy issues for various newspapers and magazines, including the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, the New York Times, USA Today, and the Los Angeles Times, and has been a frequent commentator and guest on TV andradio shows on ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, Fox News, NPR, and PBS.

Veronique de Rugy is the George Gibbs Chair in Political Economy and a senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University and a nationally syndicated columnist. Her primary research interests include the U.S. economy, the federal budget, taxation, tax competition, and cronyism. Her popular weekly columns address economic issues ranging from lessons on creating sustainable economic growth to the implications of government tax and fiscal policies. She has testified numerous times in front of Congress on the effects of fiscal stimulus, debt and deficits, and regulation on the economy.

John Samples is a vice president at the Cato Institute. He founded and directs Cato’s Center for Representative Government. Samples serves on the Oversight Board, which provides final and binding decisions on whether specific content should be allowed or removed from Facebook and Instagram. Samples is currently working on a manuscript about social media and speech regulation that extends and updates his policy analysis “Why Government Should Not Regulate Content Moderation of Social Media.” He previously wrote The Struggle to Limit Government: A Modern Political History and The Fallacy of Campaign Finance Reform. He has published scholarly articles in Society, History of Political Thought, and Telos along with numerous contributions to edited volumes. Samples has also been featured in publications including USA Today, the New York Times, and the Los Angeles Times. He has appeared on NPR, Fox News, and MSNBC. Samples received his PhD in political science from Rutgers University.

Elizabeth Slattery is a senior legal fellow and deputy director of Pacific Legal Foundation’s (PLF’s) Center for the Separation of Powers. Slattery is an evangelist for the separation of powers, spreading the good news about the Constitution’s greatest protection for Americans’ individual liberties. Slattery has written for the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy, the Cato Supreme Court Review, and the Federalist Society Review, among other publications. Justice Neil Gorsuch cited her work on the need to end improper judicial deference to federal regulators. Her opinion pieces have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, SCOTUSblog, National Review Online, and many other outlets. She previously worked at the Heritage Foundation and is a member of the Federalist Society’s Civil Rights Practice Group Executive Committee, the Maryland Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, and the American Bar Association’s Division for Public Education.

Erec Smith is a visiting scholar of politics and society for the Cato Institute and a professor of rhetoric at York College of Pennsylvania. Although he has eclectic scholarly interests, his primary work focuses on the rhetorics of anti‐​racist activism, theory, and pedagogy as well as the role of rhetoric in a free, pluralistic, and civil society. He is the cofounder and coeditor of Free Black Thought, a website dedicated to highlighting viewpoint diversity within the black intelligentsia. Smith is a senior fellow for the Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism and an adviser for Counterweight, an organization that advocates for classical liberal concepts of social justice. He is the author of A Critique of Anti‐​racism in Rhetoric and Composition: The Semblance of Empowerment. His op‐​eds on the manifestations of anti‐​racism in contemporary America can be found in Newsweek, Areo Magazine, Penn Live, Heterodox: The Blog, and the York Daily Record.

Nadine Strossen is the John Marshall Harlan II Professor of Law at New York Law School. She has written, taught, and advocated extensively in the areas of constitutional law and civil liberties, including through frequent media interviews. She is the author of Hate: Why We Should Resist It with Free Speech, Not Censorship and Defending Pornography: Free Speech, Sex, and the Fight for Women’s Rights. From 1991 through 2008, she served as president of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the first woman to head the nation’s largest and oldest civil liberties organization. Strossen is a member of the ACLU’s National Advisory Council as well as the advisory boards of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, and Heterodox Academy. In 2017, the American Bar Association presented Strossen with the prestigious Margaret Brent Women Lawyers of Achievement Award. Strossen was named one of America’s “100 Most Influential Lawyers” by the National Law Journal.

Adam Thierer is the senior fellow for Technology & Innovation at R Street and a former senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University from 2010 to 2022. He specializes in innovation, entrepreneurialism, internet, and free‐​speech issues, with a particular focus on the public policy concerns surrounding emerging technologies. Thierer serves on the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Artificial Intelligence Commission on Competitiveness, Inclusion, and Innovation. He is also a member of the Federalist Society’s Regulatory Transparency Project. Thierer has authored and edited several books, including his foundational book on the freedom to innovate, Permissionless Innovation: The Continuing Case for Comprehensive Technological Freedom.

Jessica M. Vaughan is director of policy studies for the Center for Immigration Studies, a Washington, DC–based research institute that examines the impact of immigration on American society and educates policymakers and opinion leaders on immigration issues. She has been with the center since 1992, and her area of expertise is immigration policy and operations, covering topics such as visa programs, immigration benefits, and immigration enforcement. Vaughan is an expert on immigration enforcement and public safety, having directed a Department of Justice–funded project on the use of immigration law enforcement in transnational gang suppression. In addition, she is an instructor for senior law enforcement officer training seminars at Northwestern University’s Center for Public Safety in Illinois. Prior to joining the Center for Immigration Studies, Vaughan was a foreign service officer with the State Department, where she served in Belgium and Trinidad and Tobago. Her articles have appeared in the Washington Post, New York Times, National Review, Boston Globe, The Economist, San Francisco Chronicle, National Interest, Arizona Republic, and other publications. She has testified before Congress dozens of times on immigration issues. She is frequently cited in news media reports on immigration and has appeared on NPR, CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, and PBS NewsHour.

Stan Veuger is a senior fellow in economic policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI). He is also the editor of AEI Economic Perspectives and a fellow at the IE School of Politics, Economics and Global Affairs and at Tilburg University. He was a visiting lecturer of economics at Harvard University in fall 2021 and a Campbell Visiting Fellow at the Hoover Institution in May 2022. Veuger’s research has been published in leading academic and professional journals, including the Journal of Monetary Economics, Quarterly Journal of Economics, and Review of Economics and Statistics. He is the editor, with Michael R. Strain, of Economic Freedom and Human Flourishing: Perspectives from Political Philosophy (AEI Press, 2016) and Preserving Links in the Pandemic: Policies to Maintain Worker‐​Firm Attachment in the OECD (AEI Press, 2023).

George Will’s newspaper column has been syndicated by the Washington Post since 1974. Today it appears twice weekly in more than 300 newspapers. In 1976, Will became a regular contributing editor of Newsweek magazine, for which he provided a bimonthly essay until 2011. In 1977, he won a Pulitzer Prize for commentary in his newspaper columns. In June 2019, Will released the book The Conservative Sensibility. Will has published nine collections of his Newsweek and Washington Post columns; the most recent is his 16th book, American Happiness and Discontents: The Unruly Torrent, 2008–2020, published in 2021. Will also published two books on political theory, Statecraft as Soulcraft: What Government Does (1983) and Restoration: Congress, Term Limits and The Recovery of Deliberative Democracy (1992). In 1990, he published Men at Work: The Craft of Baseball, which topped the New York Times bestseller list for two months. Will became a founding panel member on ABC’s This Week and spent over three decades providing regular commentary. He then spent three years with Fox News, where he appeared regularly on Special Report and Fox News Sunday. Will also spent four years with NBC/MSNBC. Since 2022, he has been with NewsNation.

Molly Weston Williamson is a senior fellow with the Center for American Progress and a nationally recognized expert on paid leave policy. Previously, she was the director of paid leave and future of work at A Better Balance, where she led A Better Balance’s advocacy around paid leave laws across the country and directed A Better Balance’s efforts to address the needs of all workers in a changing workforce. She was appointed by Gov. Ned Lamont as an inaugural member of the Board of Directors of the Connecticut Paid Leave Authority; she has served on the board since 2019 and chairs the Outreach and Engagement Committee. Her academic work has appeared in the Yale Law Journal, the NYU Journal of Legislation and Public Policy, and the Connecticut Public Interest Law Journal. She clerked for the Honorable Thomas L. Ambro of the Third Circuit Court of Appeals. She graduated Phi Beta Kappa with high honors from Swarthmore College and received her JD from Yale Law School.

Dakota L. Wood, who served America for two decades in the U.S. Marine Corps, is the senior research fellow for defense programs at the Heritage Foundation. Wood’s research and writing focus on programs, capabilities, operational concepts, and strategies of the Department of Defense and military services to assess their utility in ensuring the United States can protect and promote its critical national security interests. Wood originated and serves as the editor for Heritage’s Index of U.S. Military Strength, the only annual assessment available to the public of the status of America’s military and its ability to carry out its core functions. Wood retired from the Marine Corps as a lieutenant colonel in 2005. He participated in the planning and execution of operations around the world, including Operation Enduring Freedom, when he served as a lead operational/​logistics planner for U.S. Central Command during the initial operational response to the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and then as a by‐​name request in late 2002 to augment and lead operational analysis and logistics planning and execution efforts in support of Marine Corps combat forces for the invasion phase of Operation Iraqi Freedom to depose Saddam Hussein.