Joseph L. Bast
President
The Heartland Institute
Joseph L. Bast is president and CEO of The Heartland Institute, a 25-year-old national nonprofit research center located in Chicago, Illinois. Bast is the coauthor or editor of 15 books, including Rebuilding America’s Schools (1990), Why We Spend Too Much on Health Care (1992), Eco-Sanity: A Common-Sense Guide to Environmentalism (1994), and Education & Capitalism (2003). His writing has appeared in Phi Delta Kappan, Economics of Education Review, Wall Street Journal, Investor’s Business Daily, Cato Journal, USA Today, and many of the country’s largest-circulation newspapers.
Bast has been recognized for his contributions to public policy research and debate, including being named one of “The 88 to Watch in 1988” by the Chicago Tribune; recipient of the 1994 Roe Award from State Policy Network; commissioned a Kentucky Colonel by Gov. Paul E. Patton on June 19, 1996; corecipient of the 1996 Sir Antony Fisher International Memorial Award; recipient of the 1998 Eagle Award from Eagle Forum; and recipient of the 2004 Champion of Liberty award from the Libertarian National Committee. He was elected a member of the Philadelphia Society in 2002. Prior to being hired as The Heartland Institute’s first employee in 1984, Bast was coeditor of the bimonthly magazine Nomos and studied economics as an undergraduate at The University of Chicago.
Joseph B. Cahill
Editor
Crain’s Chicago Business
Joseph B. Cahill is editor of Crain’s Chicago Business directing the paper’s staff or reporters, editors and graphic designers. Cahill served as a reporter and in a variety of editing positions at Crain’s Chicago Business over the past 10 years.
A former corporate lawyer, Cahill worked as a Crain’s reporter from 1995 to 1998. He then joined The Wall Street Journal as a Chicago-based reporter before returning to Crain’s in 2000 as an assistant managing editor. A native of the Washington, D.C., area, he graduated from St. Norbert College in De Pere, Wisconsin and earned his law degree from the Illinois Institute of Technology/Chicago-Kent College of Law. He also holds a master’s degree from Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism.
Lauren Chrissos
Vice President of Development
The Heartland Institute
Lauren Chrissos is vice president of development for The Heartland Institute. As director of the department, Lauren executes proactive fundraising strategies and directs a team of donor managers who are responsible for the identification, cultivation, and maintenance of Heartland’s 1,500 supporters nationwide.
Prior to joining Heartland, Lauren spent more than four years at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University directing corporate, government, and external affairs. Lauren has also worked at the America’s Future Foundation, the Adam Smith Institute in London, and Americans for Tax Reform tackling policy issues ranging from national security to fiscal policy and health care.
Lauren is from Gaithersburg, Maryland. She attended Catholic University where she studied political science and philosophy. A professional singer, Lauren has performed at various notable venues across the country including the White House, The Rainbow Room, and the John F. Kennedy Center and has been heard on both local and national jingles on the radio.
Richard O. Dolinar, M.D.
Senior Fellow
The Heartland Institute
Dr. Richard O. Dolinar is a senior fellow with The Heartland Institute and a consultant to the pharmaceutical industry. A clinical endocrinologist specializing in diabetes in Phoenix, Arizona, he earned his Medical Degree from The State University of New York at Buffalo and did his Endocrinology Fellowship at Duke University. His direct interaction with patients for more than 30 years as a physician has nurtured an acute understanding of not only his specialty but also the evolution and current state of the American health care system.
Dr. Dolinar speaks frequently on the historical, political and economic aspects of health care. He has testified before Congress and addressed state legislators, attorneys general, and various industry groups. He is interviewed frequently by local and national media, including CNN, CBS, and PBS. His articles and opinion pieces have appeared in The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, New York Times, New England Journal of Medicine, Journal of the American Medical Association, Health Care News, and Diabetes Research. He is co-author of the book Diabetes 101, now in its third edition.
He is a Member of the Board of the American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists and serves on its National Legislative and Regulatory Committee. He is also the Chair of its Future of Health Care Task Force. Dr. Dolinar is a member of numerous other professional and civic organizations. In the past he was President of the Arizona Chapter of the Juvenile Diabetes Association. He served as a Flight Surgeon in the Vietnam War and is a retired U.S. Air Force Colonel.
Richard Epstein, Ph.D.
Professor of Law
The University of Chicago
Richard A. Epstein is the James Parker Hall Distinguished Service Professor of Law at The University of Chicago, where he has taught since 1972. He also has been the Peter and Kirstin Bedford Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution since 2000. Prior to joining the University of Chicago Law School faculty, he taught law at the University of Southern California from 1968 to 1972. He served as Interim Dean from February to June 2001.
Epstein received an LL.D., h.c., from the University of Ghent, 2003. He has been a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences since 1985 and a senior fellow of the Center for Clinical Medical Ethics at the University of Chicago Medical School, also since 1983. He served as editor of the Journal of Legal Studies from 1981 to 1991, and of the Journal of Law and Economics from 1991 to 2001. At present he is a director of the John M. Olin Program in Law and Economics.
Epstein’s books include Antitrust Decrees in Theory and Practice: Why Less Is More (AEI 2007); Overdose: How Excessive Government Regulation Stifles Pharmaceutical Innovation (Yale University Press 2006); How Progressives Rewrote the Constitution (Cato 2006); Skepticism and Freedom: A Modern Case for Classical Liberalism (University of Chicago 2003); and several others, including textbooks on torts. He has written numerous articles on a wide range of legal and interdisciplinary subjects.
Epstein has taught courses in civil procedure, communications, constitutional law, contracts, corporations, criminal law, health law and policy, legal history, labor law, property, real estate development and finance, jurisprudence, labor law; land use planning, patents, individual, estate and corporate taxation, Roman Law; torts, and workers’ compensation.
James G. Fitzgerald
Managing Director
BankNote Capital Corporation
James G. Fitzgerald is managing director of BankNote Capital Corporation and a member of the Board of Directors of The Heartland Institute.
Fitzgerald comes from a banking family and has spent his entire working life in the industry. His began his career after graduating from Middlebury College (Vermont) in the mid 1970s with the Palatine, Illinois-based Suburban Bank Group, a consortium of seven unit banks controlled by the Fitzgerald family with combined assets of a little more than $100 million.
Fresh out of college, Fitzgerald started in bank operations in Rolling Meadows, Illinois and in early 1977 became vice president and cashier of Suburban Bank of Hoffman Estates. While working full time, Fitzgerald received his MBA from the University of Chicago in 1981. The following year, the $22 million Barrington State Bank (later renamed Suburban Bank of Barrington) was acquired, with Fitzgerald becoming president at age 30.
While Fitzgerald’s banking operating experience is broad and successful, his understanding of and participation in the capital markets and accounting is also quite deep. He has been intimately involved--both as an executive and as principal--with the acquisition, formation, and merger of more than 25 banking institutions.
As CFO of Suburban, Fitzgerald worked with SEC and was intimately involved with requirements of a public company. Over the years, he has worked closely with the Federal Reserve Banks of Chicago and Kansas City, the FDIC, the Comptroller of the Currency, and the Commissioner of Banks in Illinois, Wisconsin, and Colorado.
In total, Gerry and James Fitzgerald control one bank in New Mexico, three in Colorado, two in Illinois, one in Wisconsin, and one in Virginia. Total assets exceed $1.5 billion in about 20 offices.
Fitzgerald has served on the board of directors of the Illinois Bankers Association, has spoken at several banking forums over the years, and was a long-time member of the Young Presidents Association (YPO). He has been an active board member of several nonprofit organizations and maintains homes in Barrington Hills, Illinois and Naples, Florida. He and his wife, Jane have been married for 28 years and have two grown children.
Peter Fotos
Government Relations Director
The Heartland Institute
Peter Fotos is director of government relations for The Heartland Institute. Prior to joining Heartland in October 2008, he served for more than eight years in various legislative capacities on Capitol Hill, most recently as the principal advisor to U.S. Senator Jim DeMint (R-SC) on all issues related to taxes, health care, Medicare and Medicaid, and Social Security.
While serving in Sen. DeMint’s office, Fotos developed and drafted legislation to expand health savings accounts (HSAs), to make the tax treatment of health care more fair for all Americans, to allow for the purchase of health insurance across state lines, and to save Social Security for future generations. He was recognized in December 2006 by the HSA Council for successfully negotiating the expansion of HSAs in the Tax Relief and Health Care Act of 2006.
Prior to joining Sen. DeMint’s office, Fotos served as a legislative assistant and then as legislative director in the office of U.S. Representative Paul Ryan of Wisconsin from 2002 through 2006. He served as a legislative aide in the Office of Senator John McCain (R-AZ) from 2000 through 2002. He is originally from Atlanta, Georgia and is a graduate of Presbyterian College in Clinton, South Carolina.
Jonathan Hoenig
Capitalistpig Asset Management LLC
Jonathan Hoenig is managing member of a private investment partnership. A former floor trader at the Chicago Board of Trade, Hoenig’s first book, Greed Is Good: The Capitalist Pig Guide to Investing, was published by HarperCollins. He is a frequent commentator in the financial press and has written for publications including The Wall Street Journal Europe, Wired, Maxim, and Smartmoney.com. Hoenig has been featured in numerous publications including The Wall Street Journal, Institutional Investor, and The Chronicle of Higher Education. Hoenig was recently named one of the Chicago Sun-Times’ “Thirty Under Thirty” and Crain’s “Forty Under Forty.” He is a member of the Economic Club of Chicago.
Richard Keen, Ph.D.
Meteorology Instructor
University of Colorado
Richard A. Keen is a meteorology instructor at the University of Colorado, academic scientist on the Juneau (Alaska) Ice Field Research Program, and author or co-author of more than a dozen books. His research papers on climate topics have been published in major journals, including Science, Monthly Weather Review, Journal of Climate, Annals of Glaciology, Geophysical Monographs, Bulletin of the Global Volcanism Network, and International Comet Quarterly. His early meteorological training was with the U.S. Army Meteorological Team, and he received his Ph.D. in geography (thesis topic: arctic climate change) from the University of Colorado. He resides in the mountains west of Denver, where he operates a cooperative weather station for the National Weather Service, continuing a tradition of volunteer climate observation begun by Ben Franklin and Thomas Jefferson.
Randall S. Kroszner, Ph.D.
Professor of Economics
University of Chicago Booth School of Business
Randall S. Kroszner served as a governor of the Federal Reserve System from March 2006 until January 2009. During his time as a member of the Federal Reserve Board, he chaired the committee on Supervision and Regulation of Banking Institutions and the committee on Consumer and Community Affairs. In these capacities, he took a leading role in developing responses to the financial crisis and in undertaking new initiatives to improve consumer protection and disclosure, including rules related to home mortgages and credit cards, and was director of NeighborWorks America. He represented the Federal Reserve Board on the Financial Stability Forum and the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision. As a member of the Board, he was also a voting member of the Federal Open Market Committee.
Before becoming a member of the Board, Kroszner was a professor of economics at the Booth School of Business of the University of Chicago where he is now returning to assume a newly-created chair titled the Norman R. Bobins Professor of Economics. Kroszner was Director of the George J. Stigler Center for the Study of the Economy and the State and editor of the Journal of Law & Economics. He was a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, and a director at the National Association for Business Economics. Kroszner also was a member of the Federal Economic Statistics Advisory Committee at the Bureau of Labor Statistics in the Department of Labor.
Kroszner was a member of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers (CEA) from 2001 to 2003. While at the CEA, he was heavily involved in formulating the policy response to corporate governance scandals as well as in advising on a wide range of domestic and international issues, including banking and financial regulation, government-sponsored enterprises, pension reform, terrorism risk insurance, tax reform, currency crisis management, sovereign debt restructuring, the role of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), international trade, and economic development.
Kroszner has been a visiting scholar at the Securities and Exchange Commission, the IMF, the Stockholm School of Economics, the Stockholm University, the Free University of Berlin, Germany, and the London School of Economics. He was the John M. Olin Visiting Fellow in Law and Economics at the University of Chicago Law School and the Bertil Danielson Visiting Professor of Banking and Finance at the Stockholm School of Economics.
Kroszner received an Sc.B. (magna cum laude) in applied mathematics-economics (honors) from Brown University in 1984 and an M.A. (1987) and Ph.D. (1990), both in economics, from Harvard University.
David Legates, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Climatology
University of Delaware
David Legates is a climatologist who specializes in hydroclimatology (water), statistical methods, climate change, and environmental education. His research focuses on precipitation its measurement, analysis, and assessment of extreme events as well as statistical evaluation of climatological methodologies. He has earned the Certified Consulting Meteorologist status from the American Meteorological Society and, in 1999, was awarded the Boeing Autometric Award for best paper in image analysis and interpretation. He has published more than 100 articles in refereed journals, conference proceedings, and monograph series and has made more than 200 professional presentations. Currently, Legates is an associate professor of climatology at the University of Delaware and serves as Delaware State Climatologist. He also is an adjunct professor in the Physical Ocean Science and Engineering Program and the Department of Statistics and has served as a professor at the University of Oklahoma and Louisiana State University.
Tibor R. Machan
Professor Emeritus of Philosophy
Auburn University
Tibor R. Machan is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution. He is professor emeritus of philosophy at Auburn University and holds the R. C. Hoiles Endowed Chair in Business Ethics and Free Enterprise at the Argyros School of Business & Economics, Chapman University. He lectures regularly, on political philosophy and business ethics, in Europe, Latin America, South Africa, and New Zealand and throughout the United States.
Machan is the author and editor of several books, including Liberty and Culture: Essays on the Idea of a Free Society (1989) and Revisiting Marxism: A Bourgeois Reassessment (2006). His most recent book is The Morality of Business: A Profession for Wealth Care (Springer, 2007). He has contributed to numerous scholarly journals, including American Philosophical Quarterly, Philosophy of Science, International Journal of Social Economics, and others.
Machan has been a guest on Firing Line and numerous other interview programs. He cohosted, with the late Sidney Hook, the television program For the Love of Work, on the ideas of Karl Marx. He is on the advisory boards for several foundations and think tanks and also has served on the founding Board of the Jacob J. Javits Graduate Fellowship Program of the U. S. Department of Education. In 1999, he was appointed editor for the Hoover Institution Press series Philosophical Reflections on the Free Society, which has published nine volumes. He was the 2003 president of the American Society for Value Inquiry.
Jeff Madden
Portfolio Manager
IronBridge Capital Management
Jeff Madden is a portfolio manager for the Small Cap and SMID products at IronBridge Capital Management., L.P. He has been instrumental in building the IronBridge investment track record and assets under management, which have increased from $30 million when he joined in 2001 to the current $4.9 billion level. He has been interviewed by Barron’s and quoted by Forbes.
Prior to joining IronBridge, Madden worked at Accenture in the retail management consulting practice. His roles focused on equity analysis and client interfacing, including IPO business plan creation, vendor negotiations, and strategy implementation. He received his B.A.A. in finance from the University of Iowa in 1998 with business honors and distinction.
Madden is a Chicago native who is active at his parish and enjoys outdoor activities including golfing, fishing and skiing.
Dan Miller
Executive Vice President
The Heartland Institute
Dan Miller is executive vice president and publisher of The Heartland Institute. He oversees all of Heartland’s research and education programs and presents Heartland’s ideas to several key audiences, including academics, civic and business leaders, educators, and media.
From 1999 until March 2008, Miller was business editor of the Chicago Sun-Times, where he was responsible for the daily and weekend business sections of the best-selling newspaper in the city of Chicago and Cook County and tenth largest-circulation daily newspaper in the U.S.
From 1994 to 1998, Miller served as chairman of the Illinois Commerce Commission, the state regulatory agency for utilities. During his four-year tenure, Miller downsized the commission staff, and led efforts to deregulate the state’s telecommunications, electricity and motor-carrier industries.
Miller began his journalism career as a copyboy for the Minneapolis Tribune and worked for newspapers in Ann Arbor, Ypsilanti and Grand Rapids, Michigan. He then joined the Chicago Daily News, where he worked as a business reporter, editorial writer and assistant financial editor until the paper’s demise in 1978.
Joining Crain Communications, Miller launched Crain’s Chicago Business in 1978 and served as editor for 10 years as the weekly newspaper earned local and national honors for general excellence in business reporting, commentary, and design. He was named vice president of Crain Communications in 1988, and publisher of Crain’s City & State newspaper, a national business newspaper for state and local government.
Miller was named Illinois Journalist of the Year by the Northern Illinois University faculty in 1981 and was inducted into the Chicago Journalism Hall of Fame in 2005. He is a frequent guest on WTTW Chicago Tonight and other television and radio public affairs programs.
David H. Padden
Founder and Chairman Emeritus
The Heartland Institute
David Padden, President of Padden & Company, is a lifelong resident of Chicago. He received his B.A. from Loyola University Chicago in 1949 and an MBA from the Harvard Business School in 1951. Dave spent 15 years in heavy construction work for various state, county and municipal governments. In 1963 he purchased a bond firm specializing in financing local municipal improvements.
While maintaining his base investment business, Dave has also served as CEO and/or director of several public companies and trade associations. He has been active in various trade associations, and local civic and charitable organizations.
An ardent student and teacher of economics and political science, Mr. Padden has been actively associated with market-oriented education and public policy research organizations. He was a founding director and remains on the boards of the Cato Institute, Washington, DC and the Heartland Institute, Chicago, IL. He also had long-term tenure on the boards of the Foundation for Economic Education, Irvington, NY; FreedomWorks, Washington, DC and the Acton Institute, Grand Rapids, MI.
Greg Scandlen
Senior Fellow
The Heartland Institute
Greg Scandlen is a senior fellow of The Heartland Institute and founder and president of Consumers for Health Care Choices, a non-partisan, non-profit membership organization aimed at empowering consumers in the health care system. In April 2008, Heartland and Consumers for Health Care Choices merged, with CHCC becoming a program of The Heartland Institute. He is considered one of the nation’s experts on health care financing, insurance regulation, and employee benefits. He testifies frequently before Congress and appears on such television shows as the O’Reilly Factor, NBC Nightly News, ABC News, and CNN. Scandlen gives three dozen speeches a year to organizations representing employers and labor, hospitals and physicians, insurers, and pharmaceutical companies. He has published many papers on topics such as health care costs, insurance reform, employee benefits, individual insurance programs, HSAs and HRAs, and every aspect of consumer-driven health care. Scandlen has worked for several Washington-based think tanks, including the Cato Institute, National Center for Policy Analysis, and Galen Institute. He was president of the Health Benefits Group, a benefits consulting firm, and founder and executive director of the Council for Affordable Health Insurance, a trade association of insurance companies.. He also spent 12 years in the Blue Cross Blue Shield system, most recently as director of state research at the national association.
Hon. Harrison Schmitt, Ph.D.
Astronaut, Moonwalker, Geologist
Harrison Schmitt is an American geologist and a former NASA astronaut, university professor, and U.S. Senator. He is the twelfth and last person to walk on the Moon; he and his crewmate Eugene Cernan were the last two to walk there. Cernan was the last person to walk on the moon (when they left), but Schmitt was the last person to leave the lunar module and step on the moon (when they arrived). In August 1975, Schmitt resigned from NASA to seek election as a Republican to the United States Senate representing New Mexico. He served one term and, notably, was the ranking Republican member of the Science, Technology, and Space Subcommittee. Since his Senate term, he has been a consultant in business, geology, space, and public policy. Schmitt is chair of the NASA Advisory Council, whose mandate is to provide technical advice to NASA Administrator Michael D. Griffin. Schmitt is an adjunct professor of engineering physics at the University of Wisconsin- Madison. He is the founder and serves as chairman of Interlune Intermars Initiative Inc., an organization whose goal is to advance the private sector’s acquisition and use of lunar resources.
Brad Spirrison
Principal, LHF Media
Tech columnist, Chicago Sun-Times
Brad Spirrison is serial entrepreneur and technology columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times. He is the founder of multiple advertising-supported online publications including MidwestBusiness.com, SpeedNetworking.com and MyCampFriends.com. He also is an inventor of a patent-pending social networking technology and a regular contributor to numerous online and traditional publications.
James M. Taylor
Managing Editor
Environment & Climate News
James M. Taylor is managing editor of Environment & Climate News, a national monthly publication devoted to sound science and free-market environmentalism with a circulation of approximately 75,000 readers. He is also senior fellow for The Heartland Institute focusing on environmental issues. He is author of “What Climate Scientists Think about Global Warming” (Heartland Institute, 2007) and coauthor of “State Greenhouse Gas Programs: An Economic and Scientific Analysis” (Heartland Institute, 2003) and “New Source Review: An Evaluation of EPA’s Reform Recommendations” (Heartland Institute, 2002). He has appeared on the Fox News Channel and the Good Morning America and Newsmakers national radio programs. His writing on environmental issues has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, Houston Chronicle, Detroit News, Boston Globe, Tampa Tribune, and elsewhere. Taylor previously served as managing editor of CCH Incorporated’s disability law publications, where he became a nationally known expert and frequent speaker on a variety of employment law topics. Prior to that he was a legal analyst for Defenders of Property Rights, a public interest legal foundation. Taylor received his bachelors degree from Dartmouth College and his law degree from the Syracuse University College of Law, where he was president of the local chapter of the Federalist Society and founder and editor-in-chief of the Federalist Voice.
Herbert Walberg, Ph.D.
Chairman of the Board
The Heartland Institute
Herbert J. Walberg is distinguished visiting fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution and a project investigator at the Vanderbilt University Center of School Choice, Competition, and Achievement. Awarded a Ph.D. by the University of Chicago, he taught at Harvard University and the University of Illinois at Chicago for 35 years. He has written and edited more than 55 books and has written roughly 350 articles on such topics as educational achievement, research methods, and exceptional human accomplishments. Among his latest books are the International Encyclopedia of Educational Evaluation, Education and Capitalism (with Joe Bast, Hoover Institution Press), and School Choice: the Findings (Washington, Cato Institute, 2007).
A fellow of five academic organizations including the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Psychological Association, and the Royal Statistical Society, Walberg is also a founding fellow of the International Academy of Education, headquartered in Brussels. He edits for the academy a booklet series on effective educational practices, which is distributed to education leaders in more than 150 countries and on the Internet. He is a trustee of the Foundation for Teaching Economics and chairs the boards of the Heartland Institute and the Beck Foundation.
Walberg has given invited lectures to educators and policymakers in Australia, Belgium, China, England, France, Germany, Italy, Israel, Japan, the Netherlands, South Africa, Sweden, Taiwan, Venezuela, and the United States. He has frequently testified before U.S. congressional committees, state legislators, and federal courts. He was a founding member and chaired the Design and Analysis Committee of National Assessment Governing Board, the body that sets policy for the National Assessment of Educational Progress, which is given the mission to measure the K-12 school achievement trends in the major school subjects.
