Kevin Roberts has a plan. Earlier this month, Roberts replaced Kay Coles James as the seventh president of the Heritage Foundation, the influential half-century-old conservative think tank. Roberts wants to take that influence, normally aimed squarely at Capitol Hill, and project it out at the country it’s meant to serve.

The Washington Examiner sat down with Roberts during his first week to discuss these and other goals he has for the Heritage Foundation. Roberts is a Beltway outsider who received his Ph.D. in history from the University of Texas and went on to work as a professor for several years. Roberts left that tenure-track position, however, to found with his wife the John Paul the Great Academy, a K-12 Catholic liberal arts school in his home state of Louisiana. After seven years as headmaster, Roberts moved on to another educational administrative role, this time as president of Wyoming Catholic College. He served there from 2013 to 2016 and distinguished himself and his school by refusing to accept federal student loan dollars or grant funding — and the restrictive government mandates that come with them. His last stop before arriving at Heritage was with the Texas Public Policy Foundation, which is among the nation’s largest state-based think tanks and where he again served as president.