Richard Fink
Background
Richard Fink is the executive vice president and a member of the board of directors at Koch Industries, Inc. He has been involved in public policy lobbying for almost 30 years. Since the 1980s, Fink has advocated using “ideological entrepreneurship” or “political marketing” methods to advertise free-market ideology to the public.
Fink takes his ideas on influencing public policy from Fredrich Hayek’s models of the production process. Fink describes a process in which one must first develop the intellectual raw materials, then develop these materials into policy products, and finally market and distribute them to consumers.
Following this line of thinking, Fink advocates that conservative foundations should invest in university programs, think tanks, and implementation groups. Each of these areas provide the “raw minds”, a place to “develop these minds”, and a marketable outlet to disseminate “these trained minds”.
Fink, Conservative Think Tanks, and George Mason University
Fink has been intimately involved with conservative think tanks and free-market university programs. He founded the Center for Market Processes, which later became the Mercatus Center. Fink also served as the first president of David Koch’s Citizens for a Sound Economy (CSE), which is now FreedomWorks. After working for CSE, Fink became the president of the Charles G. Koch and Claude R. Lambe Foundations.
Finally, Richard Fink has been a board member for several organizations at George Mason University including the George Mason University Foundation, the Institute for Humane Studies, and the Center for the Study of Public Choice—which received $795,902 in funding from conservative foundations between 1986 and 2005.
