The Heritage Foundation will soon be staffed up completely. Little more than a month after officially taking the helm of the conservative think tank, Heritage President Kay Coles James announced that Kim Holmes has been tapped to serve as the organization’s next executive vice president.
The personnel change signals the end of a brief period of upheaval that began with the ouster of former Sen. Jim DeMint of South Carolina from the president’s office last April. Coincidently, it also comes on the anniversary of the birth of former President Ronald Reagan.
“Kim has long had a profound impact on American policy, and we are thrilled he is continuing his stellar service to The Heritage Foundation with this well-deserved leadership role,” James said in a statement. The group’s board of trustees voted unanimously to give Holmes the nod during a Tuesday meeting at their Capitol Hill campus.
Heritage prides itself on being the favorite think tank of the Trump administration and the White House has rewarded their loyalty by enacting roughly 64 percent of their policy prescriptions in the last year. In his new role, Holmes will function as the organization’s chief operating office and will work to build on that earlier success.
“Kay has mapped out an exciting vision for Heritage and the conservative movement,” Holmes said in a statement, “and I can’t wait to start helping turn that vision of a better America into reality.”
Holmes knows his way around the Heritage. He came to the organization in 1986 in the middle of Reagan’s second term. Holmes also knows his way around the executive branch. He left the organization in 2002 to serve as assistant secretary of state during the first term of President George W. Bush. At the State Department, he focused on implementing U.S. policy at the United Nations.
Most recently, Holmes served as acting senior vice president for research, overseeing all four of the think tank’s research institutes. He is also a founding editor of the Heritage/Wall Street Journal Index of Economic Freedom now in its 23rd edition.
