Joe Pitts is a first generation Arizonan beginning a role at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) as Research Assistant, Education Policy Studies in June 2023. He studied business management (B.S.) and civic and economic thought and leadership (B.S.) at Arizona State University’s Barrett, the Honors College, graduating summa cum laude and as a Dean’s Medalist. As an undergraduate, Joe served as the inaugural program director for the Arizona Chamber Foundation’s Junior Fellows program, and co-founded the Western Tribune, a news media nonprofit. He was deeply engaged in student life, serving as Outreach Director for the Business School Council, Chairman of the AEI Executive Council, and a volunteer at the ASU All-Saints Catholic Newman Center.

Joe boasts experience speaking and presenting to audiences of every size, participating in and presenting to corporate boards, managing teams, planning and executing public programming, and making corporate-level strategic decisions. He is passionate about purpose-driven leadership, believing that it is the duty of a leader to both empower others to achieve personal excellence and guide them towards worthy common aims. Joe is also an accomplished writer, having been published in the Wall Street Journal, National Review, Chamber Business News, and the Western Tribune. He published his undergraduate honors thesis on the stratification of community and associational life in the United States, titled “Conscientious Communitarianism,” with the guidance of Dr. Peter McNamara, Dr. Zachary German, Dr. Yuval Levin, and Tim Carney.

In his personal time Joe enjoys volunteering, hiking, lifting, running 10ks, traveling, and reading. Through these activities Joe has discovered that human happiness is a matter of mind, body, and soul. He is driven by a deep desire to seek justice, modeling his life mission after Isaiah 1:17: “Learn to do right; seek justice. Defend the oppressed. Take up the cause of the fatherless; plead the case of the widow.”

Views expressed in this newsletter are mine and mine alone, and do not reflect the views or opinions of my employer(s), university, or the views or opinions of any other organization that I am affiliated with.

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Joe Pitts is a first generation Arizonan.