America’s Rural Future, the Brookings-AEI Commission on U.S. Rural Prosperity, brings together a diverse group united behind a shared mission to strengthen economic opportunity, resilience, and quality of life across rural America.
Co-Chairs
Chris Sununu, former governor of New Hampshire
Christopher T. Sununu served four terms as the 82nd governor of the state of New Hampshire and after choosing not to seek a fifth term, he returned to the private sector in January 2025 and now serves as chief executive officer of Airlines for America, the primary trade association, lobbying, and public affairs group for the 10 largest air carriers in the United States.
He is recognized as a national leader in his common-sense approach to government and balanced political navigation of otherwise polarized political waters. At the conclusion of his tenure in office, the Granite State was the fastest growing state in the Northeast, had one of the lowest unemployment rates in the nation, and had the lowest child poverty rate of any state in America.
Prior to politics, Sununu worked for 10 years as an environmental engineer cleaning up hazardous waste sites across America. In 2010, he bought Waterville Valley Ski Resort in Waterville Valley, New Hampshire, where he served for six years as CEO, general manager, and chairman of the board.
He grew up in Salem, New Hampshire. He graduated from Massachusetts Institute of Technology with a Bachelor of Science in civil/environmental engineering in 1998. He completed a five-month through-hike of the Appalachian Trail from Maine to Georgia. He lives in Newfields, New Hampshire, with his wife, Valerie, and their three children.
Heidi Heitkamp, former senator for North Dakota
U.S. Senator Heidi Heitkamp served as the first female senator elected from North Dakota from 2013 to 2019.
During her six years in the U.S. Senate, Heitkamp quickly became a proven senator who worked across the aisle to fight for North Dakotans. She personally showed that if senators work together, it can lead to real solutions.
Throughout her time in the Senate, Heitkamp prioritized improving the lives of Indigenous people and working families, stopping human trafficking, guaranteeing affordable health care, addressing childhood trauma, eliminating unnecessary regulation, and securing an energy policy that keeps cost low but achieves climate goals. Providing equal economic opportunity to rural America continues to be her lifelong pursuit.
Heitkamp previously served as North Dakota’s attorney general, and elected state tax commissioner. She serves on numerous boards including the McCain Institute, the Howard Buffett Foundation, Restore Democracy Initiative and the German Marshall Fund. She is the founder and chair of the One Country Project, an organization focused on addressing the needs and concerns of rural America. Heitkamp is the director of the Institute of Politics at the University of Chicago. She serves as a contributor to both CNBC and ABC News.
Members
Benji Backer
CEO and Founder, Nature is Nonpartisan
Benji Backer is the founder and CEO of Nature Is Nonpartisan, a movement redefining the environment as a nonpartisan issue once and for all. He is the founder of the American Conservation Coalition (ACC), the country’s largest conservative environmental organization, which he founded during his freshman year of college. A best-selling author of “The Conservative Environmentalist: Common Sense Solutions for a Sustainable Future,” Benji has been named a Changemaker by the New York Times and awarded the Fortune 40 Under 40, Forbes 30 Under 30, GreenBiz 30 Under 30, and Grist 50.
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Backer is a fellow at The Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity (FREOPP) and is one of the leading youth environmental voices in the country. Above all, Backer is an avid outdoorsman who spends most of his free time in the mountains out West. He’s a proud graduate of the University of Washington and resides in Scottsdale, Arizona.
William J. (Bill) Bynum
CEO, Hope Enterprise Corp./Hope Credit Union
William J. (Bill) Bynum is the founding chief executive officer of HOPE (Hope Enterprise Corp., Hope Credit Union, and Hope Policy Institute), a family of organizations dedicated to strengthening the financial health of people in under-resourced Deep South communities. Since 1994, HOPE’s efforts have benefited more than 3 million people in Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Tennessee, while shaping policies and practices that have improved conditions in opportunity deserts nationwide.
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Bynum began his professional career in North Carolina by helping to establish Self-Help, a pioneer in the development finance industry, and later built nationally recognized programs at the NC Rural Economic Development Center.
Bynum’s board service includes the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta – New Orleans branch, Aspen Institute, NAACP Legal & Education Defense Fund, Expanding Black Business Credit, Acumen America, and Deep South Today. He is an adviser to Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, Wells Fargo, and E Pluribus Unum. Bynum previously served as a member of the Gates Foundation’s U.S. Partnership on Mobility from Poverty, and as a Towsley Policymaker in Residence at the University of Michigan Gerald Ford School of Public Policy.
Appointed by President George W. Bush, Bynum chaired the Community Development Advisory Board. He chaired the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Consumer Advisory Board during the Obama administration, served as a member of the Biden-Harris presidential transition team, and on the U.S. Treasury Department’s Advisory Committee on Racial Equity.
A member of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, Henry Crown Fellow, Emerson Collective Dial Fellow, and Salzburg Global Fellow, Bynum has received the John W. Gardner Leadership Award, Heinz Award, McNulty Prize, the Myrlie & Medgar Evers Voices of Courage & Justice Award, and honorary degrees from Talladega College and Tougaloo College.
Phil Chow
CEO, Humanitas AI
Phil Chow is an entrepreneur, investor, and adviser with a record of building and scaling AI systems in mission critical environments. He is the CEO of Humanitas AI, which develops critical infrastructure that delivers precise guidance on benefits, training, and services for the 100 million low to moderate-income Americans who power the U.S. economy.
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Chow’s technical work centers on low resource natural language processing, robust evaluation, and secure, reliable deployment. Previously, he was a founding team member at FiscalNote, providing technology used by institutions and enterprises nationwide. Earlier in his career, he also led technology initiatives in education and health care.
He completed graduate studies at Stanford University and Singularity University. He advises nonprofits including Illumyn Impact, Develop for Good, and MLCommons, and as an active investor backs ventures building durable infrastructure for the future of work and civic life. His philanthropic focus is on economic mobility and national security.
Valerie Nurr’araluk Davidson
Executive Director, Yuut Elitnaurviat—People’s Learning Center, Inc.
Valerie Nurr’araluk Davidson, Yup’ik, is executive director of Yuut Elitnaurviat—People’s Learning Center, a nonprofit vocational center in Bethel, Alaska (pop. 6,000), serving a region of 50+ communities with no roads between them. Davidson’s distinguished career in education, higher education, health care administration, policy, governance, and advocacy includes previous roles as the first Alaska Native woman to serve as president/CEO of the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium, president of Alaska Pacific University, and lieutenant governor of Alaska (and first in the U.S.). Davidson also served as chair of the Tribal Technical Advisory Group to the U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services from its inception in 2004 to 2014.
Phil English
Co-Chairman, Government Relations Practice Group, ArentFox Schiff LLP
Phil English is the senior government relations adviser at ArentFox Schiff where he currently serves as the co-chairman of the Government Relations Practice Group and national coordinator of the Healthcare Group Purchasing Industry Initiative, an independent ethics oversight organization with responsibility for a major part of the health care supply chain. He serves on the boards of several leading policy organizations, including The Tax Foundation, a nonpartisan tax research group, and the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF), a leader in technology policy.
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English served seven terms in the U.S. House of Representatives, representing Western Pennsylvania’s 3rd District from 1995 to 2009. He served on the Ways and Means Committee and in the 110th Congress as the ranking member on the Subcommittee on Select Revenue Measures. In addition, he was a long-time member of the Joint Economic Committee and co-chair of the Congressional Economic Leadership Institute. After leaving office, he was appointed to the U.S. National Commission for the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization.
Thomas Halverson
CEO, CoBank
Tom Halverson is chief executive of CoBank, a $200+ billion financial institution and one of the largest private providers of credit to the U.S. rural economy. He is responsible for implementing the bank’s strategic and business direction as set by the board of directors. Previously, he served as CoBank’s chief banking officer where he was responsible for the bank’s agribusiness and rural infrastructure banking groups as well as the banking services group and corporate communications. Halverson is the chair of CoBank’s Management Executive Committee. Prior to joining CoBank in 2013, he spent more than 15 years with Goldman Sachs in a variety of executive positions in Asia, Europe, and North America. Before joining Goldman Sachs, he served as principal credit officer for country risk at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development in London. He is a summa cum laude graduate of Wabash College in Crawfordsville, Indiana. He earned a British Marshall Scholarship and completed a doctorate in war studies at King’s College, University of London.
Keith Humphreys
Esther Ting Memorial Professor, Stanford University
Keith Humphreys is the Esther Ting Memorial Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and professor, by courtesy, of health policy as well as a Center for Innovation in Global Health Fellow at Stanford University. His research addresses addictive disorders and the translation of science into public policy.
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He served on the White House Commission on Drug-Free Communities during the Bush administration and as senior policy advisor in the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy under President Obama. He created and co-directs the Stanford Network on Addiction Policy, which brings scientists and policymakers together to improve public policies regarding addictive substances. To recognize his service to addiction-related scholarship and policy, Queen Elizabeth II made him an Honorary Officer in the Order of the British Empire in 2022.
Derek Kilmer
Senior Vice President, U.S. Program & Policy, The Rockefeller Foundation
Derek Kilmer is the senior vice president of U.S. Program and Policy for The Rockefeller Foundation, leading efforts to engage domestic and global leaders, civil society actors, businesses, and institutions to advance issues core to the foundation’s mission.
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Kilmer served six terms as the U.S. representative for Washington state’s 6th Congressional District. A native of Washington’s Olympic Peninsula, Kilmer passed a significant new economic development law focused on helping economically distressed communities, establishing a program that became the most popular in the history of the Economic Development Administration. In 2019, Kilmer was selected by Speaker Nancy Pelosi to serve as chairman of the Select Committee on the Modernization of Congress, which passed over 200 recommendations to make Congress work better for the American people and which was described in The Washington Post as a story of “shocking function.” Recognized as a collaborative, solutions-oriented, and bipartisan leader, Kilmer has been honored by the Bipartisan Policy Center, the Congressional Management Foundation, and the National Congress of American Indians, among others. Kilmer also served as chairman of the New Democrat Coalition and taught a policy class at Princeton University focused on reforms to strengthen democracy.
Prior to his tenure in Congress, Kilmer spent eight years in the Washington State Legislature, served as vice president of a nonprofit focused on economic development, and worked as a management consultant for McKinsey & Company.
The son of two schoolteachers, Kilmer received an undergraduate degree from Princeton University’s School of Public & International Affairs and earned a doctorate from the University of Oxford while on a Marshall Scholarship.
Trent McKnight
Founder, AgriCorps
Trent McKnight is an international agriculturalist, investor, and cattle rancher based in Throckmorton, Texas. He is passionate about rural development, agricultural innovations, and empowering rural youth to drive economic growth.
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McKnight earned his bachelor’s degree in agricultural economics from Oklahoma State University and his master’s degree in comparative politics from the London School of Economics. He established a rural development organization in his community, concentrating on infrastructure development, historic preservation, and economic revitalization. His leadership experience includes serving as national president of the Future Farmers of America and chairing the USDA Beginning Farmers and Ranchers Advisory Committee.
Professionally, he has worked as an agricultural economist with the United Nations in West Africa and with the U.S. military in Iraq. In 2013, Trent launched AgriCorps, a nonprofit dedicated to enhancing school-based agricultural education across sub-Saharan Africa. At AgriCorps, he created a behavioral change model that Northwestern University economists recently validated as among the most effective agricultural interventions for driving technology adoption by smallholder farmers ever measured in Africa.
McKnight serves as an operating partner at VestedWorld, a venture capital firm specializing in African agribusiness investments. Since 2022, he has been a member of the National 4-H Council Board of Trustees, where he chairs the investment committee.
Noa Meyer
Partner and Chief Impact Officer, BDT & MSD Partners
Noa Meyer is a partner and chief impact officer at BDT & MSD Partners. She also serves as board chair of rootEd Alliance, the first collective impact initiative supported by legacy BDT & Company to strengthen the futures of rural students in America. Prior to joining BDT & MSD Partners, she was a managing director at Goldman Sachs where she launched and served as global head of 10,000 Women, a strategic initiative around women’s economic empowerment. Before Goldman Sachs, Meyer worked with a number of foundations and nonprofits focused on global development. She also held several positions in government, both in the White House and at USAID, and worked on two presidential campaigns and one prime ministerial campaign internationally. Meyer serves on the board of directors of the Brooklyn Community Foundation. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in international studies from Vassar College.
Janti Soeripto
President and CEO, Save the Children US
Janti Soeripto is president and CEO of Save the Children US, a role she assumed in 2020 as the international humanitarian organization began its second century partnering with families in the United States and around the world.
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Before leading Save the Children US, Soeripto served as deputy CEO of Save the Children International for eight years. She oversaw market growth and guided strategy as Save the Children transformed into an integrated international body after decades as a decentralized group of national organizations.
She began her global career in the private sector. For over 15 years, she held senior positions at corporations including Kimberly-Clark and Unilever, working in her home country of the Netherlands, as well as in Indonesia, the United Kingdom, and Singapore.
Soeripto has been featured in a variety of prominent media and is sought after for her insights on global leadership in both the public and private sectors and her expertise on humanitarian crises affecting children. She has been quoted in outlets including The Associated Press, POLITICO, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post, and has been interviewed on CBS News “Face the Nation,” CNN, NPR, PBS “Amanpour & Co.,” and American Public Media’s “Marketplace.”
Her past speaking engagements include those hosted by the Clinton Global Initiative, Concordia, Global Philanthropy Forum, Milken Institute, World Bank, and the United Nations, among others.
She holds master’s degrees in economics and finance, speaks Dutch, English, Indonesian, and German, and is half-Indonesian, half-Dutch. She is a parent of two children and lives in Connecticut, USA.
Chris Stirewalt
Senior Fellow, American Enterprise Institute
Chris Stirewalt is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), where he focuses on American politics, voting trends, public opinion, and the media. He is concurrently a contributing editor and weekly columnist for The Dispatch and the host of The Hill Sunday with Chris Stirewalt on NewsNation. Before joining AEI, he was political editor of Fox News Channel, where he helped coordinate political coverage across the network and specialized in on-air analysis of polls and voting trends. Before joining Fox News Channel, he served as political editor of the Washington Examiner, where he wrote a twice-weekly column and led political coverage for the newspaper.
Xochitl Torres Small
Former Deputy Secretary, U.S. Department of Agriculture
Xochitl Torres Small served as deputy secretary for the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), following an overwhelmingly bipartisan Senate confirmation on July 11, 2023. As chief operating officer for a department with over 100,000 civil servants, Torres Small reenvisioned agency permitting processes and designed and implemented USDA’s first drought program financed through the Commodity Credit Corporation.
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Prior to serving as deputy secretary, Torres Small was under secretary for rural development. In this role, she oversaw an annual $40 billion in loans and grants to provide infrastructure improvements, business development, affordable housing, community facilities, and high-speed internet access in rural, tribal, and high-poverty areas.
Before joining USDA, Torres Small was a United States representative for New Mexico’s 2nd Congressional District where she authored and passed into law measures on border security and border trade, water conservation, and a measure to make White Sands a National Park.
Heather Wilson
President, The University of Texas at El Paso
Heather Wilson became president of The University of Texas at El Paso in 2019 after serving as secretary of the United States Air Force. She is the former president of the South Dakota School of Mines & Technology, and she represented New Mexico in the United States Congress for 10 years.
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Active in community and national affairs, she is a member of the National Science Board, which oversees the National Science Foundation, and serves as a board member of the Texas Space Commission. She was the inaugural chair of the Alliance of Hispanic Serving Research Universities and is a member of the board of directors of Lockheed Martin Corporation and Google GPS.
Wilson is the granddaughter of immigrants and was the first person in her family to go to college. She graduated from the U.S. Air Force Academy in the third class to admit women and earned her master’s and doctoral degrees from Oxford University in England as a Rhodes Scholar.
UTEP is located on the U.S.-Mexico border – in the fifth largest manufacturing region in North America – and serves over 25,000 students with 171 bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degree programs in nine colleges and schools. In the top 5% of public universities in the United States for research and designated an Opportunity University for achieving both high access and high earnings for graduates by the Carnegie Foundation, UTEP is America’s leading Hispanic-serving university. It is the fourth largest public research university in Texas and serves a student body that is 84% Hispanic.
Wilson is an instrument rated private pilot. She and her husband have two adult children and four grandchildren.
Stephen W. Wilson
Retired General, United States Air Force
General Stephen W. Wilson is a retired four-star U.S. Air Force general with over 39 years of military service. Wilson has extensive operational experience including commanding the largest wing in the Middle East and commanding and reinvigorating America’s nuclear bombers and missile forces in Global Strike Command before assuming his duties as the 39th vice chief of staff of the Air Force. As the vice chief, he managed the organizing, training, and equipping of over 685,000 active duty, Guard, and Reserve airmen, helping direct strategy, policy, acquisition, technology, personnel, and risk management. He helped manage the planning, programming, budgeting, and execution of the Air Force’s $205 billion annual budget. Wilson also served on the Joint Requirements Oversight Council setting the acquisition requirements for the Department of Defense.
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Wilson was widely acknowledged as the driving force for embracing both innovative technology and new thinking to include the startup of AFWERX, a U.S. Air Force program that expands technology, talent, and transition partnerships for rapid and affordable commercial and military capabilities. In 2020, AFWERX was named as one of the Top 20 Best workplaces for Innovators in the world. General Wilson was also the catalyst behind the U.S. Air Force/MIT AI Accelerator partnership to advance and improve Air Force operations while also addressing broader societal needs. Wilson is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. He serves on the board of directors for several companies and also serves on several advisory boards. His many awards and decorations include three Defense Service Medals, the Defense Superior Service Medal, two Legions of Merit, two Bronze Stars, and two Air Medals.
Wilson is a command pilot with over 4,500 flight hours that include nearly 700 combat hours. He is a graduate of Texas A&M University and the U.S. Air Force Weapons School. He holds two master’s degrees: one in engineering management from South Dakota School of Mines and Technology and one in strategic studies from Air University.
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Acknowledgements
The Brookings Institution is a nonprofit organization devoted to independent research and policy solutions. Its mission is to conduct high-quality, independent research and based on that research, to provide innovative, practical recommendations for policymakers and the public.
The Brookings-AEI Commission on U.S. Rural Prosperity and associated work is supported by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Ascendium Education Group, CoBank, and The SCAN Foundation.
The conclusions and recommendations of the commission are solely those of its members(s), and do not reflect the views or policies of Brookings or AEI, their management teams, other scholars, or the funders acknowledged above.