Jennifer Marshall Patterson
Senior Visiting Fellow, Institute for Family, Community, and Oppurtunity
As a former vice president of The Heritage Foundation, Jennifer A. Marshall ran the think tank’s Institute for Family, Community, and Opportunity. In that capacity, she oversaw research into a variety of issues that determine the strength and character of American society. Issues explored by Institute researchers range from marriage, life, and religious liberty to health, education, and welfare to the application of America’s founding principles to today’s challenges.
Marshall collaborated with Heritage colleagues to explore how moral values and civil society relate to issues such as limited government, a strong national economy and foreign policy. She also edited Heritage’s annual Index of Culture and Opportunity, which tracks key social and economic trends to determine whether important indicators of opportunity in America are on the right track.
In 2010, National Journal named Marshall one of Washington’s 20 “power players” in recognition of her work on school choice and other education reforms.
Before joining Heritage in 2003, Marshall worked on cultural policy issues at Empower America, a free-market think tank. Before that, she was senior director of family studies at the Family Research Council and taught at an American school in Lyon, France.
She has spoken at national and international forums, testified before Congress and appeared on numerous radio and television shows, including C-SPAN’s “Washington Journal” and PBS’ “To the Contrary.”
She is the author of “Now and Not Yet: Making Sense of Single Life in the Twenty-First Century” (Multnomah Publishers, 2007). The book evaluates the cultural, practical and spiritual issues that marriage-minded young women confront as the age of first marriage continues to rise in America.
Marshall holds a master of arts in religion from Reformed Theological Seminary, a master’s degree in statecraft and world politics from the Washington-based Institute of World Politics, and a bachelor’s degree in French from Wheaton College in Wheaton, Ill., where she also earned teacher’s certification. She currently resides in Arlington, Va.
