Kevin D. Roberts, PhD
Kevin D. Roberts, PhD, was named President of The Heritage Foundation in October 2021. In September 2023, Roberts was named President of Heritage Action for America and serves both organizations in a joint role.
Roberts previously served as the Chief Executive Officer of the Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF), an Austin-based nonprofit, nonpartisan research institute and the largest state think tank in the nation.
As President of The Heritage Foundation, Roberts will continue to lead policy research efforts on many of the issues he championed at TPPF, including education, health care, border security, election integrity, and more, and his leadership will also be critical in pushing back on the radical, socialist agenda being advanced by the Left at all levels of government. At a time when so many bad ideas are coming out of Washington, his experience advancing sound policy at the state and national levels will be vital.
A lifelong educator, Roberts earned his PhD in American History from the University of Texas. After several years of teaching history at the collegiate level, Roberts in 2006 left the university to found John Paul the Great Academy, a co-ed, K-12 Catholic liberal arts school in Lafayette, Louisiana. Roberts served as the academy’s president and headmaster for seven years.
In 2013, he resigned from the academy to become President of Wyoming Catholic College. Under his leadership, the college adopted a policy of refusing to accept federal student loans and grants, lest it be forced to violate Catholic tenets. This independent stance led The New York Times to describe the school as being full of “cowboy Catholics.”
In addition to his doctorate, Roberts holds a master’s degree in History from Virginia Tech and a bachelor’s degree in History from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. Roberts and his wife have four children.
Read more about Kevin D. Roberts on The Heritage Foundation website.
2024 Plenary
The Children of Hope: Augustine and Anselm
Saint Augustine is supposed to have said: “Hope has two beautiful daughters; their names are Anger and Courage. Anger at the way things are, and Courage to see that they do not remain as they are.” Today, in an increasingly secular world, Christians need to recover this virtue of hope and teach it to our children. To do so, we should look to Saint Anselm, who – nearly half a millennium after Augustine’s death – picked up his work and articulated a faith-first approach to education that puts hope at the center of Christian learning.