Dr. Kevin Roberts is a devout Catholic visionary leading the charge nationally to impact America's public policy in his role as President of the Heritage Foundation. He was named president in October 2021 succeeding former Heritage President Kay C. James as the seventh president in the organization’s 49-year history.

Roberts previously served as the chief executive officer of the Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF), an Austin-based nonprofit, nonpartisan research institute and the largest state think tank in the nation. Under Roberts’ leadership, TPPF more than doubled in size. He also expanded the Texas think tank’s influence nationwide, opening an office in Washington, D.C., so that TPPF research might better inform federal policy debates.

Roberts is a Lafayette native where he attended Lafayette High School and earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in history from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. He later earned a Master of Arts in history from Virginia Tech.

A lifelong educator, Roberts earned his Ph.D. in American history from the University of Texas. After several years of teaching history at the collegiate level, Roberts in 2006 left the university to found John Paul the Great Academy here in Lafayette, Louisiana. Roberts served as the academy’s president and headmaster for seven years. 

In 2013, he resigned from the academy to become president of Wyoming Catholic College. Under his leadership, the college adopted a policy of refusing to accept federal student loans and grants, lest it be forced to violate Catholic tenets. This independent stance led The New York Times to describe the school as being full of “cowboy Catholics.” Roberts and his wife have four children.