Joe Pitts is a first generation Arizonan currently serving as the program coordinator for the American Enterprise Institute’s (AEI) FREE Initiative, where he works alongside senior fellow Ian Rowe to educate people, communities, and institutions around the country about how to promote a sense of agency among our nation’s youth, and to work alongside them in this effort.Previously, he was a Research Assistant at AEI, where he focused on higher education reform. Joe coauthored three reports during his time in the role, including one which sparked the U.S. House’s Education and Workforce Committee’s investigation into the ideological bias of graduate fellowships. He studied business management (B.S.) and civic and economic thought and leadership (B.S.) at Arizona State University’s Barrett, the Honors College, graduating summa cum laude. As an undergraduate, Joe served as the inaugural program director for the Arizona Chamber Foundation’s Junior Fellows program, and co-founded the Western Tribune, a news media nonprofit.Joe regularly contributes to the Western Tribune, National Review, and FUSION Magazine, and has been published in the Wall Street Journal, CNN, Deseret News, and Chamber Business News. He published his undergraduate honors thesis on the stratification of community and associational life in the United States, titled “Conscientious Communitarianism,” with the guidance of Dr. Peter McNamara, Dr. Zachary German, Dr. Yuval Levin, and Tim Carney.