Caleb Watney

I'm the co-founder and co-CEO of the Institute for Progress, a nonpartisan innovation policy think tank in Washington, D.C.

Much of my work starts from a simple observation: the United States is the R&D lab of the world. We're home to a disproportionate share of the world's top scientists and engineers, the most advanced research clusters, and the deepest capital markets. That means the policy choices we make — about who we let into the country, how we fund scientific discovery, how we govern new technologies like AI, and whether our institutions can actually execute on ambitious goals — have outsized consequences not just for Americans, but for everyone. I think we're falling short of our potential on most of these fronts, and that the gap between where we are and where we could be represents one of the most important problems in the world.

Before co-founding IFP, I worked at a range of think tanks across the political spectrum in D.C., including the Progressive Policy Institute on the center-left, the R Street Institute on the center-right, and the Mercatus Center. I think the most durable progress on innovation policy comes from building coalitions that cut across partisan lines, and I've tried to build my career in a way that reflects that.

I have a master's in economics from George Mason University and a bachelor's from my small hometown college, Sterling College, in Kansas.

I live in D.C. with my wife Katarina and our son Teddy.