Dr. Chester E. Finn, Jr.

Chester E. Finn Jr. is distinguished senior fellow and president Emeritus at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute. He is a scholar, educator, and public servant who has been at the forefront of the national education debate for thirty-five years. He was born and raised in Ohio and received his doctorate from Harvard in education policy. President from 1997 to 2014 of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, where he remains as a distinguished senior fellow, he is also a senior fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution where he chaired Hoover’s Koret Task Force on K–12 Education. A member of the Maryland State Board of Education, he is the author of over twenty books and more than 400 articles; his work has appeared in publications such as The Christian Science Monitor, Education Week, Harvard Business Review, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, and The Weekly Standard. Finn is the recipient of many awards and holds an honorary doctorate from Colgate University. He and his wife, Renu Virmani, a physician, have two grown children and three adorable granddaughters. They live in Chevy Chase, MD.