Nanette Rutka Everson is part of The Heritage Foundation's management team, serving as Director of the Young Leaders Program. In addition, she is a Legal Fellow in the think tank's Center for Legal and Judicial Studies.
As Director, Everson develops, manages and implements programs to identify, train and field future conservative leaders. Organized around Heritage's 10-year Leadership for America campaign, these programs aim to demonstrate that there is a viable career path for principled intellectual conservatives in education, energy and the environment, entitlement reform, entrepreneurship, family and religion, first principles, health care, the judicial system and national defense.
Everson also works with university faculty and administrators, graduate students, and undergraduate student leaders, to link them with the mature conservative movement and Washington policy analysts, while managing Heritage's intern and alumni programs and job bank.
In addition, Everson is a Fellow in the Center for Judicial and Legal studies, headed by former U.S. Attorney General Edwin Meese III, where she works on such matters as public corruption, governance, white collar defense issues, overcriminalization, and detainee rights under the law of war.
Before joining Heritage in 2007, Everson had a successful legal career in both public and private, domestic and international, legal practice. Most recently, she served as General Counsel at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, where she evaluated every regulatory, legislative, administrative, enforcement and litigation matters arising under the Commodity Exchange Act and helped lead the agency's Exchange Governance and Conflicts of Interest Rulemaking. Prior to that, she served as an Associate Counsel to the President in the George W. Bush Administration where she concentrated on ethics, conflicts of interest, financial disclosure and governance issues.
Everson also held several positions in the Reagan Administration, including Associate Solicitor at the Interior Department and Special Counsel to the Assistant Attorney General at the Justice Department.
Immediately after the Reagan Administration, Everson returned to private practice as an equity partner in the 100-lawyer Chicago law firm McBride, Baker & Coles (which is today known as Holland & Knight). After that, she practiced foreign investment law in Izmir , Turkey , where she represented the World Bank's International Finance Corporation. After several years living abroad raising her children – during which time she lived primarily in Paris and taught in the French public schools – Everson re-entered private practice in Baker Bott law firm's trial department as Special Counsel. In this position, she concentrated on securities litigation and intellectual property.
Everson is a 1980 graduate of the University of Michigan Law School and a former law clerk to Judge Thomas A. Clark at the 5 th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. She graduated magna cum laude from Yale University in 1977 and lives in Arlington , Va. , with her family.
