Lanhee J. Chen

About

Lanhee J. Chen, PhD, is the David and Diane Steffy Fellow in American Public Policy Studies at the Hoover Institution and cochair of its Healthcare Policy Working Group, At Stanford University, he is also director of Domestic Policy Studies, lecturer in the Public Policy Program, and an affiliated faculty member of the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law at the Freeman-Spogli Institute for International Studies.

In addition to his academic appointments, Chen is a partner at the Brunswick Group, a global business advisory firm. He is also a presidentially nominated and Senate-confirmed member of the Amtrak Board of Directors and a member and former chair of the Board of Directors at El Camino Health, an integrated health system in Northern California.

Chen’s writings have appeared in a variety of outlets, including The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and The Washington Post, and he is a contributing writer to the Opinion page at the Los Angeles Times. He is also an NBC News contributor and appears frequently on the network’s flagship public affairs program, Meet the Press.

A veteran of several high-profile political campaigns, Chen has worked in politics and government as well as business and academia. As a candidate for California State Controller in 2022, he was the strongest-performing statewide Republican and won endorsements from every major newspaper in the state. He also advised numerous major campaigns, including four presidential efforts.

In 2012, he was policy director of the Romney-Ryan campaign, serving as Governor Mitt Romney’s chief policy adviser, a senior strategist on the campaign, and the person responsible for developing the campaign’s domestic and foreign policy. During the 2014 and 2018 campaign cycles, Chen served as a senior adviser on policy to the National Republican Senatorial Committee.

From 2014 to 2018, Chen served as a presidentially appointed and Senate-confirmed member of the Social Security Advisory Board, an independent, bipartisan panel that advises the president, Congress, and the commissioner of Social Security on matters related to the Social Security and Supplemental Security Income programs. He also served in the George W. Bush administration as a senior official at the US Department of Health and Human Services. 

Chen was honored in 2015 as one of the Politico 50, a list of the “thinkers, doers, and visionaries transforming American politics.” He earned a similar honor in 2012 when he was named one of Politico’s “50 Politicos to Watch.” 

In 2017, Chen was the William E. Simon Visiting Professor in the School of Public Policy at Pepperdine University. At Stanford, he was previously a lecturer in law at Stanford Law School. An eight-time winner of Harvard University’s Certificate of Distinction in Teaching, Chen has produced scholarship that has appeared or been cited in several of the nation’s top political science journals.

Chen formerly practiced law at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP and was the Winnie Neubauer Visiting Fellow in Health Policy Studies at the Heritage Foundation. He was also an operating partner and strategic advisor at NewRoad Capital Partners, a private equity fund.

Chen serves in a variety of leadership and advisory roles in nonprofit organizations. He is a director of the Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity; cochair of the Policy Advisory Board for Free the Facts, a policy education organization; a member of the Board of Directors of the Winston Health Policy Fellowship; a member of the external advisory committee for the AAMC (Association of American Medical Colleges) Research and Action Institute; and a member of the Council of Scholars for the Better Medicare Alliance. He is also a member of the Committee of 100, an organization of prominent Chinese Americans.

Chen earned his PhD and AM in political science from Harvard University, his JD cum laude from Harvard Law School, and his AB magna cum laude in government from Harvard College. He is a member of the State Bar of California.