Paul Winfree

Paul Winfree

Chair

Paul Winfree was appointed to the Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board in 2019. The Board elected Winfree as Chair for 2020, 2021 and 2022.

Paul Winfree is an economist, a leader, and a trusted public policy advisor. He has served in top management and policy roles in the White House, the US Senate, and in think tanks.

He is currently a Distinguished Fellow in Economic Policy and Public Leadership at The Heritage Foundation. From 2015-2016 and 2018-2022, he was Director of Economic Policy Studies and the Richard F. Aster Fellow at Heritage. He also served as acting Director of the Center for Data Analysis at Heritage in 2016 and from 2021-2022.

Winfree is also Chair of the Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board, a 12-member board selected by the President of the United States, that oversees the Fulbright program and other educational exchanges sponsored by the US Department of State.

Winfree’s current research focuses on public finance and US economic history, especially the history and political economy of US fiscal policy. In addition, his research is also concerned with the economics of media and of education. He is author of a book on the evolution of economic and fiscal policy from colonial America until the present called The History (and Future) of the Budget Process in the United States: Budget by Fire (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019).

During Winfree’s three terms as Fulbright Board Chair, he has emphasized relationship building to expand opportunities for the world's premier educational and cultural exchange program. In this capacity, he has worked to establish a number of partnerships between the Fulbright Program, universities, and other top institutions. These include initiatives between Fulbright, the US National Archives, and the US National Park Service that will expand scholarship related to cultural, historical, and environmental conservation. Winfree also worked closely with the State Department by introducing unprecedented policy changes in response to the COVID-19 pandemic and to expand resources available to Fulbright scholarship recipients that were affected by the pandemic.

Before rejoining Heritage in 2018, Winfree was Deputy Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy, the Deputy Director of the Domestic Policy Council, and the Director of Budget Policy, all at the White House. Winfree was also Chair of the Deputies Committee that oversaw the execution of all domestic policy at the Deputy Secretary level throughout the administration as well as the interagency policy coordination process. During the 2016 Presidential Transition, Winfree led the team responsible for the Office of Management and Budget.

In addition to his other research, Winfree has published on topics related to health economics and economic mobility. In 2009, he developed a health insurance microsimulation model that is still used extensively by analysts at Heritage to estimate how changes in federal health policy affect federal budgetary outcomes.

His research has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Investor’s Business Daily, USA Today, and Congressional Quarterly, among other publications.