2019 Lincoln Fellows
Christopher Bedford is editor-in-chief of The Daily Caller News Foundation. He is also the vice chairman of Young Americans for Freedom and sits on the board of the National Journalism Center. His work has been featured in The American Mind, The New York Post, National Review and The Federalist, among other publications. He regularly appears on Fox News and Fox Business, and is occasionally complained about on MSNBC. Bedford is a graduate of American University.
James Braid is the policy director for the House Freedom Caucus. Previously, he was deputy chief of staff to Representative Ted Budd, and held the same position for Representative Mark Sanford. Prior to his congressional service, he worked for Heritage Action for America. He is a former Feulner fellow, a Forbes “30 under 30” listmaker for Law and Policy, and holds a B.A. in political science from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
James Braid is a Jack Roth Charitable Foundation Lincoln Fellow for 2019
Jennifer Bryson is a Visiting Fellow at Hudson Institute. On the side, she started LetAllPlay.org to advocate for getting politics out of sports. She was most recently the director of the Islam and Religious Freedom Team at the Religious Freedom Institute. She founded the Zephyr Institute, worked at the Witherspoon Institute, and taught part-time at the U.S. Army War College. After 9/11 she worked as a civilian for the U.S. Department of Defense in Egypt and Yemen, as an interrogator for the Defense Intelligence Agency at Guantanamo from 2004 – 2006, and on the Policy staff of the Office of the Secretary of Defense. Bryson holds a B.A. in political science from Stanford University, and an M.A. in medieval Christian intellectual history and a Ph.D. in Greco-Arabic and Islamic studies from the department of near eastern languages and civilizations at Yale University. While she was an undergraduate at Stanford, she studied Marxism-Leninism for two semesters at the Karl Marx University in the former East Germany.
Dustin Carmack currently serves as chief of staff to Congressman John Ratcliffe from Texas’ 4th Congressional District. Until recently, he served as Congressman Ron DeSantis’ (FL-06) chief of staff. Prior to his time on the Hill, Dustin worked at Heritage Action for America and The Heritage Foundation as a Government Relations Strategist and Deputy Executive Branch Liaison during the Bush Administration. Carmack attended Truman State University. He also studied as a Rotary Ambassadorial Scholar at Tel Aviv University in Israel where he pursued a Masters in Middle Eastern History, Hebrew, and Arabic.
Dustin Carmack is the Michael Burstein Lincoln Fellow for 2019
David Deavel is editor of Logos: A Journal of Catholic Thought and Culture and a visiting professor at the University of St. Thomas (MN). He is a past winner of the Acton Institute’s Novak Award. His co-edited book, Beyond the Soul and Barbed Wire: The Continuing Legacy of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and Russian Voices in American Culture, is forthcoming from Notre Dame Press. Besides his academic publications, his writing has appeared in many public journals including First Things, Library of Law & Liberty, Minneapolis Star Tribune, National Review, and the Wall Street Journal. He holds a PhD in theology from Fordham.
Matthew D. Dickerson is policy manager at Americans for Prosperity. Dickerson was previously a veteran staffer for the Republican Study Committee, the caucus of conservatives in the House of Representatives, where he served under four chairmen in several senior roles, including as policy director, interim executive director, and senior policy staff. He also served as legislative director for the late Congressman C.W. Bill Young (R-FL). With more than a decade of experience as a Congressional staffer, Matthew Dickerson is an expert in an array of policy issues, including the budget, welfare and entitlement reform, and tax policy. Dickerson is a graduate of the College of William and Mary in Virginia and holds a Bachelor of Arts in government and history.
Matthew Dickerson is the Robert and Ruth Green Lincoln Fellow for 2019
Mytheos Holt is senior fellow in Freedom to Innovate with the Institute for Liberty. Prior to his work at IFL, he served as a communications strategist at Mair Strategies. Before joining Mair, he worked as political editor for TheBlaze. He also served as a speechwriter for US Senator John Barrasso, and covered the Ohio and Illinois 2010 midterms for National Review Online. In addition, he has served on the editorial board of the New York Observer, and on the advisory board of Young Conservatives for the Freedom to Marry. His writing has appeared at American Greatness, The American Spectator, The Hill, RealClearPolicy, Townhall, The Federalist and The Daily Caller. Holt holds a B.A. in government and history from Wesleyan University.
Anna Smith Lacey is executive director of The Hungary Initiatives Foundation, a Washington-based cultural and educational non-profit. She previously served in the Hungarian Foreign Ministry as U.S. desk officer and subsequently as congressional liaison and political attaché at the Hungarian Embassy in Washington DC. She also serves as vice president of the Common Sense Society of Budapest. She authored, translated and edited numerous English and Hungarian language publications on US and Hungarian democracy and constitutionalism, and was a frequent contributor to the Hungarian weekly Heti Válasz covering American politics. Smith Lacey was born and raised in Hungary, earned her Master’s degree in international relations at Corvinus University focusing on American foreign policy, and pursued graduate studies at ELTE School of English and American Studies.
Darin Miller is deputy press secretary and director of strategic communications for Vice President Pence. Previously, he served as communications director for the House Freedom Caucus, where he was Caucus spokesman, advised members on communications strategy, wrote editorial content, and produced the group’s weekly podcast. He also served as communications director for Congressman Jim Jordan of Ohio, and on the communications team at the Family Research Council. He was part of the inaugural class of The Heritage Foundation’s Feulner and Weyrich Fellowship. A Pennsylvania native, he is a 2009 graduate of Grove City College, where he edited the student newspaper The Collegian.
Stafford Palmieri is the CEO of HavenPay, a privacy-focused payment platform. She also owns and is the president of a growth strategy consulting firm, Palmieri Partners. Previously, she led business development operations for the Americas design business of AECOM, a global infrastructure firm. She served for five years in the administration of Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal in various policy and operational roles, including as policy director, deputy chief of staff and in the cabinet-appointed role of commissioner of administration, the state’s chief financial officer. She was named Forbes “30 Under 30” in 2016 as the youngest commissioner ever to serve. Prior to her time in Louisiana, she spent two years at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a nonprofit think tank focused on educational excellence. Palmieri holds a B.A. in political science from Yale University and an M.B.A from the Wharton School at University of Pennsylvania.
Stafford Palmieri is the Rich and Jaqueline Lombardi Lincoln Fellow for 2019
Jack Michael Posobiec III is a correspondent and host for conservative One America News Network. In 2016, he was the Special Projects Director for Citizens for Trump, the largest Trump grassroots organization in the United States. Jack is a veteran intelligence officer of the United States Navy with multiple deployments overseas. He has written two non-fiction books: Citizens for Trump: The Inside Story of the People’s Movement to Take Back America and 4D Warfare: A Doctrine for a New Generation of Politics.
Jack Posobiec is a Jack Roth Charitable Foundation Lincoln Fellow for 2019
Sam Schneider is the director of marketing for Encounter Books, an independent publisher dedicated to the preservation of democratic culture. He is a graduate of Kenyon College.
Andrew Veprek is a deputy assistant secretary in the Department of State’s Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration, where he oversees the admission of refugees to the United States and international migration policy. A career member of the U.S. Foreign Service, he has served overseas in Cameroon, Canada, Iraq, and Thailand. His domestic assignments include the Department of State’s Operations Center, its Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs, the staff of the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Foreign Affairs, and the White House.
Andrew Veprek is the Julia Araiza & James Rosenthal Lincoln Fellow for 2019
