John Austin is a senior fellow with the Eisenhower Institute at Gettysburg College (EI), leading EI’s work promoting ideas and network-building to spread economic opportunity and strengthen democracies across the globe. He also serves as a non-resident senior fellow with the Brookings Institution where for over twenty years he has led efforts to support economic transformation in the American Midwest and in the industrial heartlands of Western democracies. In addition, Austin is an affiliated faculty with the University of Michigan Marsal School of Education. Previously he served 16 years as a state-wide elected official on the Michigan State Board of Education, including as the board’s president for six years. 

Austin received his master’s degree in public administration from Harvard Kennedy School and a bachelor’s degree in economics and political science with high honors and Phi Beta Kappa from Swarthmore College.