About

Who We Are

Established in 2012 as an independent, non-partisan, grant-making organization, FEHE funds and advises programs at elite universities where the next generation of cultural leaders are formed.

We advance our mission of academic and cultural renewal by building internal university programs supported by external institutes, forming exceptional students in character and virtue through close mentorship and intellectual friendship, networking these students with select faculty, industry leaders, and with each other, and multiplying their impact across industries, geographies, and generations.

In the 2024-25 academic year, our network sponsored 85 for-credit courses for over 3,500 students, and hosted over 1,650 events for nearly 40,000 students.

People

With decades of experience in advising and managing academic programs and reform initiatives at leading universities, as well as extensive business and financial expertise, each member of our leadership team brings a deep personal and professional commitment to renewing higher education and forming tomorrow’s leaders.

Trustees

Francis J. Hager, Chairman

Francis J. Hager is the Chairman of the Foundation for Excellence in Higher Education. He also serves as Managing Partner at OppCAP Group LLC, which he co-founded in 2011 to help asset managers access the institutional investor community and global capital markets. In addition to decades of experience in finance, Mr. Hager brings significant expertise in higher education reform. He is currently a member of the IESE (Barcelona) Business School US Advisory Council, the Board of Trustees of the Collegium Institute, and the Board of Regents of the Delbarton School (Morristown, New Jersey). Mr. Hager holds a B.S. in Economics from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and an M.Phil. in Economics from the University of Oxford.

Luis Tellez, President

Luis Tellez is the President of the Foundation for Excellence in Higher Education. He also serves as the President of the Witherspoon Institute, a scholarly center in Princeton, New Jersey, and is a member of the Advisory Council of the James Madison program in American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton University. Mr. Tellez received a BS and MS in chemical engineering as well as an MBA in Finance from Washington University in St. Louis.

Donald Readlinger, Secretary

Mr. Readlinger is a partner in the law firm Troutman Pepper Locke LLP. He has practiced law since 1999, focusing on corporate and transactional matters, and has represented several nonprofit corporations and charitable organizations throughout his career. Prior to commencing his legal career, Mr. Readlinger held various positions in investment banking and insurance, and with the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. He has served as a member of the board of directors of the Morningside Institute (New York, N.Y.) and is a trustee of the Aquinas Institute for Catholic Life at Princeton University. Mr. Readlinger received a B.A. from Boston College and a J.D. from Rutgers School of Law. He lives in Princeton, New Jersey with his wife and three children.

Keith Fullenweider

Mr. Fullenweider is partner in the Houston office of Vinson & Elkins LLP. He has practiced in the area of mergers & acquisitions and private equity since joining V&E in 1988. Mr. Fullenweider has served as Chair of the firm since 2022. He holds a JD with high honors from the University of Texas School of Law and an AB in history, summa cum laude, from Princeton University.

Robert P. George

Robert P. George is McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence and Director of the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton University. He is also Herbert W. Vaughan Senior Fellow of the Witherspoon Institute. On several occasions he has been a Visiting Professor at Harvard Law School. He has served as Chairman of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom and as a presidential appointee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. He has also served on the U.S. President’s Council on Bioethics and as the U.S. member of UNESCO’s World Commission on the Ethics of Science and Technology. He was a Judicial Fellow at the Supreme Court of the United States, where he received the Justice Tom C. Clark Award. A Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Swarthmore College, he holds the degrees of JD and MTS from Harvard University and the degrees of DPhil, BCL, DCL, and DLitt from Oxford University, in addition to twenty-three honorary degrees. He is a recipient of the U.S. Presidential Citizens Medal, the Honorific Medal for the Defense of Human Rights of the Republic of Poland, and Princeton University’s President’s Award for Distinguished Teaching, among many other honors. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the American Academy of Sciences and Letters, and is Of Counsel to the law firm of Robinson & McElwee.

Myles Harrington

Mr. Harrington is President and Co-Founder of Grant Street Group, a govtech company that supplies software-as-a-service to state and local government agencies, who use it to bill, collect and distribute taxes, fees, and fines. He received his undergraduate degree from Georgetown University and his MBA from Carnegie-Mellon University. For the first fifteen years of his professional career, he was an investment banker at both Wall Street and regional firms.

Steven Justice

Dr. Justice is Professor emeritus of English at UC Berkeley, where he taught topics in medieval literary history and literary criticism. He is currently Distinguished Visiting Professor of Medieval Studies at Case Western Reserve University, and is former President of the Berkeley Institute where he remains a Senior Fellow. Justice has been Council of the Humanities Fellow at Princeton University, and Senior Fellow of the Witherspoon Institute, and has held fellowships from the Stanford Humanities Center, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Huntington Library, and the University of California.

Boyd Smith

Mr. Smith is a private investor in commercial real estate and high-tech start-up companies. He and his two business partners founded the California Family Foundation, which funds Beechwood School, an independent K–8 school that serves low-income and minority students. Boyd and his wife, Jill, also founded the Golden Gate Family Foundation, which ran a scholarship and mentoring program for youth who are first generation college-bound. He is currently an Emeritus Board Member of the Hoover Institution Board of Overseers at Stanford University and a past Board Member of the Lucille Packard Foundation for Children’s Health. He received a BS in Economics from the University of Utah, and an MBA from Stanford University. Boyd and his wife reside in Palo Alto, California.

Thomas N. Trkla

Thomas N. Trkla is the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Brookwood Financial Partners, which he founded in 1993, and the founder, Chairman, Chief Executive Officer, and President of Yesway. He also serves as Chairman of the Executive and Investment Committees for both organizations. Mr. Trkla is actively engaged in civic and educational leadership. He serves as an Advisory Committee member for the Massachusetts Campaign for Children, a statewide non-profit child advocacy organization; a Director of the Princeton Association of New England; a Director of the Foundation for Excellence in Higher Education; and a Director of the Land Conservation Assistance Network (Land CAN). He is also a member of the Advisory Council of the James Madison Society at Princeton University and the Urban Land Institute. Mr. Trkla holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from Princeton University and a Master of Management (MBA) from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. In 2004, he completed the Oxford Strategic Leadership Programme at the Saïd Business School, University of Oxford.

Officers

Kelly Hanlon, Director of Operations

For nearly twenty years, Kelly Hanlon has directed programming, operations, strategy, and development in industries as diverse as K–12 and higher education, economics and finance, music, community organizations, religious institutions, and the environment. She has founded or advised more than a dozen entrepreneurial entities. In her role as Director of Operations for FEHE, Hanlon works across the network to ensure FEHE can effectively carry out its mission.

Hanlon earned her undergraduate degree in politics and psychology as a McConnell Scholar at the University of Louisville before pursuing graduate work in economics at the University of Delaware.

An experienced board member, Hanlon currently serves in an advisory capacity to the following organizations: the Human Flourishing Program (Harvard); the Penn Initiative for the Study of Markets (Penn); the Aquinas Institute for Catholic Life (Princeton); the Center for Statesmanship, Law, and Liberty (RIT); and the Beatrice Institute (University of Pittsburgh).

She lives in southeastern Pennsylvania and originally hails from Kentucky, the bluegrass state. In her free time, she enjoys hiking with her husband, young children, and hounds.

John F. Doherty, Director of Finance and Assistant Treasurer

John Doherty is Director of Finance of FEHE. Mr. Doherty holds an AB in History from Princeton University.