The Heritage Foundation announced on Monday that it has selected the Claremont Institute as the recipient of the Heritage Innovation Prize. The Claremont Institute will use the $100,000 award to lead the American Heartland Fellowship, an initiative designed to educate promising leaders in key industries and states about the principles of the American Founding. The fellowship aims to equip these leaders with practical knowledge and connections to ensure that America maintains robust, independent structures of capital, media, communications, and other vital infrastructure free from progressive institutional influence.
Heritage President Kevin Roberts congratulated the Claremont Institute on receiving this award: “The Heritage Foundation’s Innovation Prize was established with a clear mission: to bolster our stalwart allies—like the Claremont Institute—in the conservative movement's battle against the Left and its anti-American agenda. Claremont's American Heartland Fellowship embodies a noble pursuit, shaping the next generation of leaders to uphold the timeless values of our nation's Founding Fathers. Heritage takes great pride in endorsing this remarkable organization.”
Ryan Williams, president of The Claremont Institute, expressed gratitude for the recognition and support: “The Claremont Institute has been teaching American founding principles and their application to our pressing national controversies to American leaders since we were founded in 1979. Our alumni are now everywhere, in media, policy, law, academia, politics, speechwriting, and law enforcement. We are grateful to The Heritage Foundation for their support of our newest expansion of this vital work, The Heartland fellowship—a program for civic-minded business leaders who want to understand how we got to our current crisis and how best to defend and revive the American way of life.”
This is not a first for The Heritage Foundation; it marks their fourth round of Innovation Prizes awarded. Previous winners include Communio, National Association of Scholars, Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs, Speech First, and Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation. These awards are sponsored by The Heritage Foundation’s robust endowment for innovative conservative projects.
For more information on the most recent Innovation Prize awards, read here. For information on the inaugural awards, read here. For more information about the prize itself, read here.
