Heritage Foundation Leadership for America

Rea S. Hederman Jr. is Assistant Director of The Heritage Foundation's Center for Data Analysis (CDA), where he is also Senior Policy Analyst.

Hederman's responsibilities include managing CDA's work on legislative analysis and Social Security. He also provides statistical analysis and econometric modeling for key Heritage policy initiatives, among them poverty, income inequality, taxes and welfare.

Hederman is a founding member of the Center for Data Analysis, which Heritage created in 1997 to provide the public policy community with state-of-the-art modeling, database products and research assistance.

CDA's team maintains scores of databases to support strategic research; provides confidential reviews of legislation for members of Congress and the White House; and supplies data and analysis for news organizations. The Census Bureau, Internal Revenue Service, Social Security, Medicare and Department of Education are only a few of the agencies and programs included in the databases. CDA's peer-reviewed analytical models shed critically important insight on how policy changes affect social and economic systems.

Hederman's commentaries have appeared in The Washington Times, The Washington Post and FOXNews.com. He is quoted by major newspapers and wire services and appears regularly on such cable news outlets as CNN, FOX, CNBC and MSNBC.

Hederman, who joined Heritage in 1995, is a graduate of the University of Virginia with bachelor's degrees in history and foreign affairs. He has a master's in public policy from Georgetown Public Policy Institute.

He and his wife Caryn, an attorney, live in Alexandria, Va. They have two children. When not reading public policy papers, Hederman enjoys cooking for his family and trying to teach his boys how to play guitar.