The Foundation for American Innovation is thrilled to announce that James Wallner is joining the team as a Senior Fellow. James is an expert on the separation of powers, Congress, political parties, and the federal policy process, and will be supporting our governance research.
James was previously a Senior Fellow at the R Street Institute and the Group Vice President for Research at the Heritage Foundation. He also spent over a decade on Capitol Hill working in senior positions in both the House of Representatives and Senate. He was the Executive Director of the Senate Steering Committee during the chairmanships of Pat Toomey and Mike Lee. In that capacity, he served as the principal parliamentary advisor to the chairman and Steering’s 16-member Executive Committee. Before this, he served as Legislative Director to Jeff Sessions and Pat Toomey.
James is the author of three books, The Death of Deliberation: Partisanship and Polarization in the United States Senate (Lexington Books, 2013), On Parliamentary War: Partisan Conflict and Procedural Change in the United States Senate (The University of Michigan Press, 2017), and The Death of Deliberation: Gridlock and the Politics of Effort in the United States Senate (Lexington Books, 2020). You can follow him on X here.
Additionally, we’re excited to welcome Mark Shanoudy as Director of Operations, James Poulos and Keegan McBride as Non-Resident Senior Fellows, and Patrick Blumenthal as Non-Resident Fellow. Mark was previously Director of Operations at the Ethics and Public Policy Center and will be leading FAI’s operations and events. James is the founder of RETURN, acquired by Blaze Media, where he is editor-at-large; editorial director of Frontier; and host of Zero Hour. Keegan is a lecturer in AI, government, and policy at the Oxford Internet Institute and an Adjunct Senior Fellow in National Security and Technology at the Center for a New American Security. Patrick is an investor and operator running an early-stage DeepTech fund, and he previously worked at Village Global. Be sure to follow James, Keegan, and Patrick on X as well.
