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Brian Hooks is an American non-profit leader who currently is CEO and Chairman of Stand Together. He also is President of the Charles Koch Foundation, President of the Charles Koch Institute, and was previously Executive Director and Chief Operating Officer of the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. [1] [2]
He attended the University of Michigan from 1996 to 2000, graduating with a B.A. in Political Science.
Hooks was Director of the Global Prosperity Initiative and Social Change Project from September 2000 to June 2005. He also helped develop and manage the Enterprise Africa project, which studied the role of entrepreneurship in economic development. [3]
He then became Director of the Mercatus Center at George Mason University from July 2005 to June 2014. He became President of the Charles Koch Foundation in Arlington, Virginia, in July 2014; a month later he also became associated with the Charles Koch Institute. In July 2018, Hooks was named Chairman and CEO of Stand Together, and was co-chair of the Koch Network from 2016-2018. During the Covid-19 pandemic of 2020, Hooks announced that Stand Together would create an online effort to provide cash assistance through donations to families hit the hardest and the promotion of cooperation in communities. [4]
Hooks lives in Virginia, with his wife and daughter.
George Mason University is a public research university in Fairfax County, Virginia near Washington, D.C. The university was originally founded as the Northern Virginia University Center of the University of Virginia in 1949 as an extension school and regional branch of the University of Virginia for mid-career working professionals and non-traditional students in Northern Virginia and the Washington, D.C. Metropolitan Area.
The Cato Institute is an American libertarian think tank headquartered in Washington, D.C. It was founded in 1977 by Ed Crane, Murray Rothbard, and Charles Koch, chairman of the board and chief executive officer of Koch Industries. Cato was established to focus on public advocacy, media exposure and societal influence.
The Koch family foundations are a group of charitable foundations in the United States associated with the family of Fred C. Koch. The most prominent of these are the Charles Koch Foundation and the David H. Koch Charitable Foundation, created by Charles Koch and David Koch, two sons of Fred C. Koch who own the majority of Koch Industries, an oil, gas, paper, and chemical conglomerate which is the US's second-largest privately held company. Charles' and David's foundations have provided millions of dollars to a variety of organizations, including libertarian and conservative think tanks. Areas of funding include think tanks, political advocacy, climate change denial, higher education scholarships, cancer research, arts, and science.
The Institute for Humane Studies (IHS) is a non-profit organization that promotes the teaching and research of classical liberalism in higher education in the United States. IHS offers funding opportunities, programs, and events for faculty and graduate students seeking careers in academia as well as various fellowships.
Daniel "Dan" T. Griswold is a senior research Fellow and co-director of the Program on the American Economy and Globalization at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. He was previously the president of the National Association of Foreign-Trade Zones, an organization based in Washington DC. Prior to NAFTZ, he served as the director of the Cato Institute's Center for Trade Policy Studies, where he authored numerous studies on trade and immigration policy. Before joining Cato in 1997, Griswold served as press secretary for Congressman Vin Weber of Minnesota, and later for 12 years as editorial page editor of the Colorado Springs Gazette-Telegraph. He has written for major newspapers such as The Wall Street Journal and the Los Angeles Times, appeared on CNN, PBS, C-SPAN and other national TV and radio networks, and testified before congressional committees. He was born in a small Midwestern town, graduated from the University of Wisconsin–Madison with a bachelor's degree in journalism and economics, and received a master's degree in the Politics of the World Economy from the London School of Economics. Griswold has written extensively on such subjects as immigration reform and the U.S. balance of trade. He also authored the book Mad about Trade: Why Main Street America Should Embrace Globalization, published in 2009. He lives with his wife, Elizabeth, in Northern Virginia.
The Antonin Scalia Law School is the law school of George Mason University, Virginia's largest public research university. It is located in Arlington, Virginia, roughly 4 miles (6.4 km) west of Washington, D.C., and 15 miles (24 km) east-northeast of George Mason University's main campus in Fairfax, Virginia. The law school is accredited by the American Bar Association (ABA). In 2023, The New York Times described Antonin Scalia Law School as "a Yale or Harvard of conservative legal scholarship and influence."
John Otho Marsh Jr. was an American politician and an adjunct professor at George Mason University School of Law. He served as the United States Secretary of the Army from 1981 to 1989, and as a member of the United States House of Representatives from Virginia from 1963 to 1971.
The Mercatus Center is an American libertarian, free-market-oriented non-profit think tank. The Mercatus Center is located at the George Mason University campus, however the organization is privately funded and its employees are independent of the university. It is directed by Daniel M. Rothschild and its board is chaired by American economist Tyler Cowen. The Center works with policy experts, lobbyists, and government officials to connect academic learning with real-world practice. Taking its name from the Latin word for market, the center advocates free-market approaches to public policy. During the George W. Bush administration's campaign to reduce government regulation, The Wall Street Journal reported, "14 of the 23 rules the White House chose for its 'hit list' to eliminate or modify were Mercatus entries".
Peter Joseph Boettke is an American economist of the Austrian School. He is currently a professor of economics and philosophy at George Mason University; the BB&T Professor for the Study of Capitalism, vice president for research, and director of the F.A. Hayek Program for Advanced Study in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics at the Mercatus Center at GMU.
John Blundell was a British economist who served as Director General and the Ralph Harris Fellow at the Institute of Economic Affairs. Blundell had been involved in the creation and development of numerous free-market think tanks.
Charles Paul "Chuck" Blahous III is the J. Fish and Lillian F. Smith Chair and Senior Research Strategist at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, as well as a visiting fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution, specializing in domestic economic policy and retirement security, as well as federal fiscal policy, entitlements, and health care programs.
Nancy Mitchell Pfotenhauer is the president of MediaSpeak Strategies. She has been a Senior Policy Advisor and National Spokesperson with the 2008 John McCain presidential campaign and political commentator on Fox News, CNN and MSNBC. She was also former Executive Vice President of Citizens for a Sound Economy (CSE), former President of the Independent Women's Forum, and former President of Americans for Prosperity.
Floyd Arthur "Baldy" Harper was an American academic, economist and writer who was best known for founding the Institute for Humane Studies in 1961.
Richard Harold Fink is an American businessman and academic. He is the former executive vice president of Koch Industries, the second largest privately held company in the U.S.
Charles G. and David H. Koch (1940–2019), sometimes referred to as the Koch brothers, have become famous for their financial and political influence in United States politics with a libertarian, more specifically, right-libertarian or American-style libertarian political stance. From around 2004 to 2019, with "foresight and perseverance", the brothers organized like-minded wealthy libertarian-oriented conservatives, spent hundreds of millions of dollars of their own money to build an "integrated" and "stealth" network of think tanks, foundations, "grassroots" movements, academic programs, advocacy and legal groups to "destroy the prevalent statist paradigm" reshape public opinion to favor minimal government. As of mid 2018, the media has been encouraged to refer to the "Koch network" rather than the "Koch brothers".
Charles de Ganahl Koch is an American billionaire businessman. As of February 2024, he was ranked as the 23rd richest man in the world on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, with an estimated net worth of $64.9 billion. Koch has been co-owner, chairman, and chief executive officer of Koch Industries since 1967, while his late brother David Koch served as executive vice president. Charles and David each owned 42% of the conglomerate. The brothers inherited the business from their father, Fred C. Koch, then expanded the business. Koch Industries is the largest privately held company by revenue in the United States, according to Forbes.
Donors Trust is an American nonprofit donor-advised fund. It was founded in 1999 with the goal of "safeguarding the intent of libertarian and conservative donors". As a donor advised fund, Donors Trust is not legally required to disclose the identity of its donors, and most of its donors remain anonymous. It distributes funds to various conservative and libertarian organizations, and has been characterized as the "dark money ATM" of the political right.
Kevin Gentry is a conservative political activist and fundraiser who serves as vice president of the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation. A top aide to Charles Koch and David H. Koch, Gentry serves as vice president of special projects at Koch Industries.
The Charles Koch Institute is a libertarian-oriented public policy research, programming, grant-making, and fellowship-funding organization based in Virginia. Named after Charles Koch, its founder and primary financier, it pursues conservative economic policies and a non-interventionist foreign policy that has been characterized as anti-neoconservative.
Stand Together is an American philanthropic organization that was first established in 2003 and is often referred to informally as the Koch Network. It is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization based in Arlington, Virginia, and was founded by Charles Koch to assist philanthropic activities across the United States. Formerly known as The Seminar Network, its renaming as Stand Together was announced on May 20, 2019. The founding CEO is Brian Hooks.