Heritage founder, think tank pioneer, and movement builder, Edwin John Feulner, Jr. was born Aug. 12, 1941, in Chicago to Helen Joan Feulner and Edwin J. Feulner, Sr., who owned a real estate firm. After growing up in suburban Chicago, Feulner attended Regis University in Denver.
Edwin J. Feulner, Ph.D.
Heritage founder, think tank pioneer, and movement builder
Edwin J. Feulner, Jr. was born Aug. 12, 1941, in Chicago to Helen Joan Feulner and Edwin J. Feulner, Sr., who owned a real estate firm. After growing up in suburban Chicago, Feulner attended Regis University in Denver. There he read Arizona Sen. Barry Goldwater’s best-selling manifesto, The Conscience of a Conservative, and Russell Kirk’s The Conservative Mind, which influenced his thinking and the direction of his life.
He graduated from Regis University with a B.A. in business administration and English, and received an M.B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Finance and Commerce in 1964. He later attended Georgetown University and the London School of Economics before earning a doctorate at the University of Edinburgh in 1981.
Feulner began his Washington career as a public affairs fellow for the Center for Strategic Studies (now the Center for Strategic and International Studies) and later served at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, where he wrote on subjects such as economic trade embargoes with the Soviet Union. He later became a confidential assistant to Rep. (and later Defense Secretary) Melvin R. Laird (R-WI). Afterward, Feulner became chief of staff to Rep. Philip M. Crane (R-IL), whom he met in 1962 after founding an Intercollegiate Studies Institute (ISI) group on campus. Feulner went on to have a lifelong relationship with ISI and serve on its board of trustees.
Prior to founding Heritage in 1973, Feulner served as executive director of the Republican Study Committee.
He became Heritage president in 1977, a position he held until 2013. Feulner served as president again on an interim basis from 2017–2018. President Ronald Reagan awarded Feulner the Presidential Citizens Medal in 1989.
Feulner authored nine books: The American Spirit (2012), Getting America Right (2006), Leadership for America (2000), Intellectual Pilgrims (1999), The March of Freedom (1998), Conservatives Stalk the House (1983), Looking Back (1981), Congress and the New International Economic Order (1976), and Trading with the Communists (1968).
He was the editor of U.S.-Japan Mutual Security: The Next Twenty Years (1981) and China—The Turning Point (1976), and a contributor to 10 other books and numerous journals, reviews and magazines. Feulner also was publisher of Heritage’s Policy Review magazine from 1977 until 2001, when Heritage transferred the publication to the Hoover Institution. He was the co-founder and chairman of Townhall.com, which coordinated the online activities of dozens of conservative organizations and columnists.
Feulner’s leadership transformed The Heritage Foundation from a small policy shop into America’s powerhouse of conservative ideas and what The New York Times called “the Parthenon of the conservative metropolis.”
Published Works
Nine books spanning more than four decades of conservative thought
As Editor & Contributor
Feulner edited U.S.-Japan Mutual Security: The Next Twenty Years (1981) and China—The Turning Point (1976), contributed to 10 other books and wrote for numerous journals, reviews, and magazines.
He served as publisher of Heritage’s Policy Review magazine from 1977 until 2001, and co-founded and chaired Townhall.com, which united dozens of conservative organizations and columnists online.
