Oren Cass

Oren Cass is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, where he focuses on energy, the environment, and the social safety net. He was domestic policy director of Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign in 2011–12. In that role, Cass shaped campaign policy and communication on issues from health care to energy to trade. Since then, he has outlined new conservative policy approaches on poverty, climate change, environmental regulation, and international trade. In 2015, Politico recognized him as one of 50 “thinkers, doers and visionaries transforming American politics” for his work as the “conservative poverty crusader.”

Cass has written columns and essays for publications including the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Washington Post, National Affairs, City Journal, National Review, and Politico. He has testified before House and Senate congressional committees; made presentations at conferences organized by the Manhattan Institute, the Legatum Institute, the American Enterprise Institute, the Cato Institute, the Adam Smith Society, the Conservative Policy Action Conference, the American Legislative Exchange Council, and the State Policy Network; and spoken on university campuses from Harvard, MIT, and Wharton to Penn State and Texas Tech. For good measure he has appeared on TV and radio programs in the U.S., U.K., Germany, Russia, Australia, and Korea.

Prior to joining MI, Cass was a management consultant for Bain & Company in the firm’s Boston and New Delhi offices, where he advised global companies across a range of industries on implementing growth strategies and performance-improvement programs. He holds a B.A. in political economy from Williams College and a J.D. from Harvard University, where he was an editor and the vice president of volume 125 of the Harvard Law Review.