Dr. Stuart Butler, Distinguished Fellow and Director, Center for Policy Innovation, Heritage Foundation

Stuart M. Butler, a nationally recognized architect of public policy, directs the Center for Policy Innovation. This new division of The Heritage Foundation is charged with designing the next generation of breakthrough ideas.

Butler envisioned the Center for Policy Innovation, or CPI, as the “iPod division” of Heritage--a small, loosely structured group assembled to research and develop radically innovative solutions to some of America’s toughest challenges.

Before taking the helm of CPI in August 2010, Butler guided Heritage’s domestic policy research for almost 30 years. As vice president for domestic and economic policy studies, he helped shape the debate on critical issues from health care and Social Security to welfare reform and tax relief.

Butler grew up in Shropshire, in the west midlands of England. The son of a mechanic who left school at age 13, he says his modest roots strongly influenced both his personal values and his approach to policy. True, he holds bachelor’s degrees in physics and math, and also economics, as well as a doctorate in American economic history from the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. But Butler believes that empowering ordinary people--not experts or government officials--is the best way to solve social problems.