Edwin Feulner

Ed Feulner
President of the The Heritage Foundation
Born	Edwin John Feulner, Jr. (1941-08-12) August 12, 1941 (age 75) Chicago, Illinois, United States
Term	February 16, 1973 to April 4, 2013
Predecessor	Position Established
Successor	Jim DeMint

Edwin John "Ed" Feulner, Jr. (born August 12, 1941) is the former president of the conservative think tank, The Heritage Foundation. He served as President from 1977 to 2013. His replacement, former U.S. Senator Jim DeMint, was named successor in late 2012 and took over as president on April 3, 2013. Dr. Feulner is widely credited with establishing the The Heritage Foundation as the most dynamic and far-reaching public policy research organization in the world.

According to the Heritage Foundation, its mission is "to formulate and promote conservative public policies based on the principles of free enterprise, limited government, individual freedom, traditional American values, and a strong national defense."

Ed Feulner was born on August 12, 1941 in Chicago, Illinois to Helen Joan (née Franzen) and Edwin John Feulner, Sr., owner of a Chicago real estate firm. He came from a line of German-American Catholics (his grandparents had immigrated to the US in the 1870s) and he was the first born of five. He was also the first and only son. His sisters names are: Mary Ann, Joan, and Barabara. As a child, he usually went by the name "Bud." He was the first of four and the Feulner’s only son. He was often called “Bud” within the family and his sisters were Mary Ann, Joan, and Barbara. Feulner was born into a family of German-American Catholics.

Currently, Feulner and his wife, Linda Claire Leventhal, live in Alexandria, Virginia. They have two children: Edwin J. Feulner III and Emily V. Lown.

Feulner attended Immaculate Conception High School (Elmhurst, Illinois) before he enrolled in Colorado's Regis University, a Jesuit school in Denver. Feulner claims that he was only an "instinctive conservative" until he attended Regis University, where he eventually "came to an intellectual understanding," in which he was fully able to grasp conservative polices. Feulner graduated from Regis University with a bachelor's degree in English in 1963. After receiving an MBA from the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Business in 1964 he attended Georgetown University and the London School of Economics, where he was a Richard M. Weaver Fellow. He then earned a doctorate at the University of Edinburgh.