Robert Alt and Lavea Brachman, "Think Tanks"

Robert Alt is President and Chief Executive Officer of The Buckeye Institute for Public Policy Solutions.

Prior to leading The Buckeye Institute, Alt was a Director in the Center for Legal and Judicial Studies, under former U.S. Attorney General Edwin Meese III, at The Heritage Foundation.  He serves on the Board of Advisors for the Ashbrook Center at Ashland University where he has also taught constitutional law and political parties and interest groups.  He previously taught national security law, criminal law, and legislation at Case Western Reserve University School of Law.

Alt is a regular speaker at dozens of universities and law schools across the country, and his commentary has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Times, New York Post, U.S. News & World Report, and The San Diego Union-Tribune.  Alt is a regular contributor to National Review Online, where he has published more than 100 articles and blogs.  He has provided commentary on CNN, Fox News Channel, PBS, and numerous syndicated radio programs.

In 2004, Alt spent five months in Iraq as a war correspondent.

Alt has testified before Congress multiple times, including at the confirmation hearings for Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan, before the Senate Judiciary Committee concerning the Supreme Court’s approach to its business law docket, before the House Judiciary Committee regarding the Terrorist Surveillance Program and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), and before the Federal Election Commission regarding matters of constitutional and administrative law.  He has also testified before Ohio’s General Assembly and Ohio’s Eminent Domain Task Force.

Alt graduated from The University of Chicago Law School, following which he clerked for Judge Alice Batchelder of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. He holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in political science and philosophy from Azusa Pacific University.  He resides with his wife and two dogs in Columbus, Ohio.

As Executive Director and a co-founder of the Greater Ohio Policy Center, Lavea has been instrumental in shaping the organization’s direction and strategic policy priorities aimed at restoring prosperity to Ohio. She brings a passion for community and economic redevelopment to this work and a belief in the productive impact of linking sound policy with good practices. To advance this agenda in Ohio, Lavea has also formed strategic organizational partnerships with state and national organizations, including through her previous positions as non-resident senior fellow with the Brookings Institution Metropolitan Policy Program and as a policy fellow with the German Marshall Fund in Washington, D.C., which she has advised on their “cities in transition” initiative investigating European city revitalization practices that can be modeled in U.S. cities. She was a leading architect and co-author of the Brookings-Greater Ohio state policy report, “Restoring Prosperity: Transforming Ohio’s Communities for the Next Economy,” that provided a blueprint for state economic revitalization and received extensive, statewide attention for its data-driven, bipartisan approach.

Lavea previously practiced environmental law in Washington, D.C. and was a partner with a Cambridge, Massachusetts consulting firm advising Fortune 500 companies on brownfield property redevelopment strategies. She also worked in the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Environmental Management at the Department of Energy during the Clinton Administration on community and neighborhood development and land reuse issues surrounding the U.S. decommissioned nuclear sites. While living in Boston, Lavea worked for a community development corporation and then as a Visiting Fellow at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy (LILP) and a Visiting Professor in MIT’s Department of Urban Studies and Planning, she developed and taught workshops on property redevelopment and neighborhood revitalization efforts. Lavea speaks frequently and writes on policies and practices for revitalizing legacy cities and most recently co-authored “Regenerating America’s Legacy Cities,” a policy report examining these cities’ challenges and offering a set of recommended solutions.

She holds a bachelor’s degree from Harvard College, a law degree from The University of Chicago Law School, and a master’s in city planning from Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She has two teenagers and lives with her family in a first-ring suburb of Columbus, Ohio.

Presented on April 28, 2015, by the American Constitution Society and the Federalist Society.