Kyle Wingfield is a native of Dalton and graduate of the University of Georgia. He joined the Foundation as president and CEO in April 2018 after spending nine years as an opinion columnist for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. He has also worked for the Wall Street Journal, based in Brussels, Belgium, from 2004 to 2009, and for the Associated Press, based in Atlanta and Montgomery, Ala., from 2001 to 2004.

At the AJC, Kyle wrote often about state politics and policy, focusing especially on education and school choice, transportation, health care, and state and local taxation. He is a frequent guest on GPB’s “Political Rewind” show and was a finalist for the Reason Foundation’s Bastiat Prize for Journalism in 2013. Kyle’s weekly column continues to appear in 10 newspapers around the state.

Kyle received the UGA Grady College’s John E. Drewry Young Alumnus Award in 2006, was named to the UGA Alumni Association’s 40 Under 40 Class of 2012 and is a member of UGA’s Board of Visitors. He is a member of Leadership Georgia’s Class of 2018 and, as an Eagle Scout, remains an active volunteer in Scouting.

Benita Dodd Cotton is a journalism graduate of Rhodes University in Grahamstown, South Africa, who immigrated to the United States in 1986. The Cobb County resident was an editorial writer and columnist for The Atlanta Journal Editorial Board and an editorial writer for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution Editorial Board before joining the Georgia Public Policy Foundation as vice president in March 2003.

She leads the Foundation’s Environmental Initiative and communications. She is a member of the 2007 class of Leadership Georgia, a member of the American Enterprise Institute’s Leadership Network (class of 2015), and a faculty member of the Leadership Institute of Virginia. She serves on the Political Science Advisory Board at Kennesaw State University, on the Board of Advisors for America’s Future Foundation Georgia and on the Board of Governors for the Georgia Charter Schools Association, and is a Policy Advisor for the Heartland Institute. She served on the Board of Common Cause Georgia and was appointed in April 2020 to the Georgia Advisory Committee to the U.S. Civil Rights Commission.

She addresses civic and leadership groups across Georgia on current issues and free-market solutions. She is a frequent contributor to newspapers, television and radio programs around the state, spent seven years providing free-market perspectives as a commentator on a weekly Atlanta Radio Korea program, and appears regularly on Current NewPo, an online video newstalk program for the News and Post Korean-American news service.

Kennedy Atkins is a native of Birmingham, Ala., and graduate of Samford University who joined the Foundation as Development Associate in 2019 and was named Donor Relations Manager in 2020.

Atkins graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in Political Science and a minor in French. His internships included stints at the Alabama Policy Institute (a sister think tank to the Georgia Public Policy Foundation), with Alabama State Rep. Jack Williams, and with DirectPath, which helps employees manage their health care benefits, before his December 2018 graduation. He also worked as a venue manager for a catering company.

Atkins assists Foundation President and CEO Kyle Wingfield with donor relations and outreach.

Christopher Denson joined the Foundation in March 2020 as Director of Policy and Research. He brings to the Foundation nearly a decade of experience in the healthcare arena in Georgia, most recently as Director of Outreach at HCA Memorial Health, a 612-bed Level 1 trauma center serving a 32-county region in Southeast Georgia and South Carolina.

Before that, he was Manager of Health Policy Consulting for Leavitt Partners in Washington, D.C., and Director of Advisory Services for Hometown Health, a multi-state rural hospital trade association in the Southeastern United States and Iowa.

A native of Douglasville, Ga., Denson graduated from Princeton University with a bachelor’s degree in Politics and was a member of Princeton’s Varsity Football team. He earned his Master’s in Public Health (Health Policy and Management) at the University of Georgia after launching his career as a staff member in the Office of U.S. Sen. Saxby Chambliss, managing constituent services and a legislative portfolio of Armed Services and Veterans’ Affairs issues.

Denson is a member of the Zell Miller Leadership Institute Class of 2019 and has served as a volunteer supporting nonprofit delivery of healthcare to uninsured residents in South Georgia.

Keara Vickers is Communications Director at the Georgia Public Policy Foundation. Before joining the Foundation on September 14, 2020, Vickers was Associate Director for Advancement Communications at Carnegie Mellon University, where she was responsible for strategy and implementation of social media outreach across a variety of platforms. Before that, she managed social media for Reason Magazine and managed social media, email marketing and website management for the Competitive Enterprise Institute.

Vickers, a native of Moundsville, W. Va., earned a Bachelor of Science in Broadcast Journalism from Ohio University’s Scripps School of Journalism.

Hayley McCloud is Georgia Public Policy Foundation’s External Affairs Manager.

McCloud comes to the Foundation from the Office of the Georgia Secretary of State, where she had worked since July 2019, most recently as Legislative Director. Her previous positions include Special Projects Coordinator at the Independent Insurance Agents of Georgia; Senior Manager of State Affairs for the American College of Rheumatology, Political Field Representative for the Georgia Association of REALTORS®; and Legislative Correspondent/Field Representative for (then) U.S. Rep. Tom Price of Georgia.

A Cherokee County resident, McCloud is a graduate of Kennesaw State University, where she earned her bachelor’s degree, with a major in political science, and a master’s in public administration.

Harold Brown is professor emeritus of Crop and Soil Sciences at the University of Georgia and author of, “The Greening of Georgia: The Improvement of the Environment in the Twentieth Century.” He is the author of over 120 refereed journal articles and 12 book chapters.

Jeffrey Dorfman is an economist and professor at The University of Georgia, where he has been since 1989. He teaches classes in economic theory, the economics of the food industry, and macroeconomic theory and policy. He performs research mostly on productivity measurement, economic forecasting, and the economics of growth and sprawl.

Leonard Gilroy is Senior Managing Director of the Pension Integrity Project at Reason Foundation, a nonprofit think tank advancing free minds and free markets. The Pension Integrity Project assists policymakers and other stakeholders in designing, analyzing and implementing public sector pension reforms.

John C. Goodman is one of the nation’s leading thinkers on health policy. The Wall Street Journal calls Dr. Goodman “the father of Health Savings Accounts.” Modern Healthcare says he is one of four people who have most influenced the changes shaping our health care system. Dr. Goodman is the author of nine books and has authored numerous editorials in The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Investor’s Business Daily, Los Angeles Times, and many others.

Kelly McCutchen is a native of Ellijay, Georgia, and a graduate of Georgia Tech. He was Assistant Vice President in the Trust Department of Trust Company Bank in Atlanta before joining the Foundation in 1993. He served as President and CEO of the Georgia Public Policy Foundation from 2010 until December 2017, when he moved on to become executive director of HINRI.org. Kelly writes on education, tax, health care and economic policy.

Christine P. Ries is Professor of Economics at the Georgia Institute of Technology. She earned her Ph. D. in International Business Economics at the University of Chicago and has held faculty positions in Global Corporate Finance at The Harvard Business School, The Fuqua Business School at Duke University, The Peter Drucker Graduate Management Center and the Claremont Graduate University, and Stanford University. After being appointed to the Special Council for Tax Reform and Fairness for Georgians in 2010, Dr. Ries focused her expertise on the problem of tax structure and economic growth in Georgia.

Dr. Benjamin Scafidi is director of the Education Economics Center in the Coles College of Business at Kennesaw State University and a Senior Fellow with the Georgia Public Policy Foundation and the Friedman Foundation. Previously, he was a professor of economics and director of the Economics of Education Policy Center at Georgia College & State University and director of education policy for the Georgia Community Foundation Inc., where his research focused on education and urban policy.

Eric Wearne is an assistant professor in the School of Education at Georgia Gwinnett College, and teaches undergraduate courses on assessment. He is a founding board member at Latin Academy Charter School, a startup middle school in Atlanta, and has helped found a hybrid homeschool/private high school, St. John Bosco Academy.