Our Mission
The Mission of Discovery Institute’s Center on Wealth & Poverty is to apply the perennial truths of economics and ethics to the urgent challenges of today. We are building a sustained argument against the progressive ideological regime that increasingly dominates America’s institutions and rebuilding the foundation of the nation’s first principles: freedom, equality, charity, and the pursuit of happiness for all.
What We Do
- Provide a multifaceted defense of the practical and moral necessity of free markets through the publication of books, articles, and research by Institute scholars.
- Foster a discussion of current events and top issues in economics, public policy, and culture at our blog, Wealth and Poverty Review.
- Engage the academic, business, student, and faith communities in meaningful dialogue about the free enterprise system through public lectures and debates held nationwide.
- Offer a summer seminar program to inspire, train, and mentor young leaders in business, politics, and religion.
- Inform policy and thought through a targeted outreach to policymakers and opinion leaders.
- Bring our defense of free enterprise to the public sphere through radio and television interviews and originally produced media.
Our Team
Senior Fellow and Co-Founder of Discovery InstituteGeorge Gilder is Chairman of Gilder Publishing LLC, located in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. A co-founder of Discovery Institute, Mr. Gilder is a Senior Fellow of the Center on Wealth & Poverty, and also directs Discovery's Technology and Democracy Project. His latest book, Life After Google: The Fall of Big Data and the Rise of the Blockchain Economy (2018), Gilder waves goodbye to today's Internet. In a rocketing journey into the very near-future, he argues that Silicon Valley, long dominated by a few giants, faces a “great unbundling,” which will disperse computer power and commerce and transform the economy and the Internet.
Fellow, Discovery Institute's Center on Wealth & PovertyJerry Bowyer is the Chief Economist of Vident Financial, Editor of Townhall Finance, Editor of the business channel of The Christian Post, host of Meeting of Minds with Jerry Bowyer podcast, President of Bowyer Research, and author of The Maker Versus the Takers: What Jesus Really Said About Social Justice and Economics. He is also Resident Economist with Kingdom Advisors, serves on the Editorial Board of Salem Communications, and is Senior Fellow in Financial Economics at the Center for Cultural Leadership. He has been a Forbes.com columnist and a frequent commentator on Fox Business News, Fox News, and CNBC. He has been a contributing editor of National Review Online, The New York Sun and Townhall Magazine, and he has written for the Wall Street Journal and for numerous other publications. Jerry lives in Pennsylvania with his wife, Susan, and the youngest three of his seven children.
Journalist and Senior Fellow, Center on Wealth and PovertyJonathan Choe is a journalist and Senior Fellow with Discovery Institute's Center on Wealth and Poverty, covering homelessness issues for its Fix Homelessness initiative. Prior to joining Discovery, Choe spent several years as one of the lead reporters at KOMO-TV, consistently the top rated television station in Seattle. His in depth stories on crime and deep dive investigations into the homeless crisis led to measurable results in the community, including changes in public policy. Choe has more than two decades of experience in television news behind the scenes and in front of the camera for ABC, NBC, FOX, CBS, and Tribune. He has also been nominated and honored with multiple industry awards including an Emmy. Choe spent several years teaching classes on emerging media and entrepreneurship to under privileged youth in inner city Chicago. As an independent journalist, Choe also contributes regularly to the Mill Creek View and Lynnwood Times and has reported on exclusive stories in the past year for Daily Wire and The Postmillennial.
Fellow, Center on Wealth & PovertyNathan Lewis is the author of four books on economic topics, including three about the gold standard. He has maintained a website on economic topics since 2005, at newworldeconomics.com. He has fifteen years of experience in the asset management industry, in research and portfolio management. Today, he is the editor of the Polaris Letter, an investment newsletter.
Senior Fellow, Center on Wealth & PovertyRobert Marbut is a renowned expert on homelessness and a senior fellow of Discovery Institute’s Center on Wealth & Poverty. Marbut has a PhD in Political Behavior and American Political Institutions and his career has been marked by bipartisanship having served as Chief of Staff for San Antonio Mayor Henry Cisneros in the 1980s, as a White House Fellow under George H. W. Bush, and most recently as the Executive Director of the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness from 2019 to 2021 under both the Trump and Biden administrations. Additionally, he served on the Board of Directors of the United States Olympic Committee from 1992 to 2004.
Senior Fellow, Center on Wealth & PovertyMichael Medved is a nationally-broadcast talk radio host, podcaster and best-selling author. With an audience growing to 5 million weekly listeners, his daily three-hour current events and pop culture show has placed for two decades among the ten most important talk shows in the United States. His daily podcast, “In the Light of History,” available with his radio show (commercial-free) to a growing list of subscribers, provides historical context for the news and analysis he covers.
Senior Fellow, Center on Wealth & PovertyGale L. Pooley teaches U.S. economic history at Utah Tech University. He has taught economics and statistics at Brigham Young University-Hawaii, Alfaisal University in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Brigham Young University-Idaho, Boise State University, and the College of Idaho. Dr. Pooley serves on the board of HumanProgress.org.
Fellow, Center on Wealth & PovertyTim Scala’s experience in the international financial markets began in 1969 as a young foreign exchange trader for a British Merchant Bank at a time when the Breton Woods system was still functional. He was an active currency and fixed-income trader during the most chaotic and volatile periods in history. As a member of senior management for a large regional bank and a member of the bank’s ALCO Committee, helped construct, analyze, and execute the institution’s risk-management function. He has broad and deep experience as a Trader, a Manager, an Instructor and an Expert in trading rooms, courtrooms, and teaching venues for decades. He has a practitioner’s perspective of the major international events influencing global financial markets. Financial professionals from well over one hundred major financial institutions throughout the world have attended his seminars.
Senior Fellow, Center on Wealth and PovertyScott Powell has worked in the corporate, academic, and research worlds. He has taught at two universities, served on two corporate boards, and been an entrepreneur—founding two companies. He has been Senior Fellow at the Discovery Institute since 2012, after a six-year affiliation with Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. He has written three books and over 350 published articles in the Wall Street Journal, Investor’s Business Daily, Newsmax, The Federalist ,USA Today, Barron’s Financial, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, The Houston Chronicle, and some 50 other newspapers and journals in the U.S., Europe, and Asia. He delivered the valedictory address at his graduation from the University of Chicago with honors (B.A. and M.A.) and received his Ph.D. in economics from Boston University.
Senior Fellow at Discovery, Senior Research Fellow at Heritage FoundationJay W. Richards, Ph.D., is the Director of the DeVos Center and William E. Simon Senior Research Fellow at the Heritage Foundation, and a Senior Fellow at Discovery Institute. Richards is author or editor of more than a dozen books, including the New York Times bestsellers Infiltrated (2013) and Indivisible (2012); The Human Advantage; Money, Greed, and God, winner of a 2010 Templeton Enterprise Award; The Hobbit Party with Jonathan Witt; The Privileged Planet with Guillermo Gonzalez, coming out in a second edition in 2024; The Price of Panic: How the Tyranny of Experts Turned a Pandemic Into a Catastrophe with Douglas Axe and William Briggs; and Eat, Fast, Feast. His most recent book, with James Robison, is Fight the Good Fight: How an Alliance of Faith and Reason Can Win the Culture War.
Senior Fellow, Center for Wealth and PovertyBill Walton is a Senior Fellow of the Center on Wealth and Poverty, and Vice President of the Council for National Policy. He is the chairman of Rappahannock Ventures, LLC (private equity) and Rush River Entertainment (feature film production), which he founded in 2010.
About Us
The Center on Wealth and Poverty is a program of Discovery Institute, a 501 (c) 3 non-profit and non-partisan educational and research organization based in Seattle. We are supported entirely by the generosity of private foundations and individual donors committed to a vibrant public life infused with faith and freedom.
