Jon Parrish Peede, the new chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), is a native of Mississippi who moved to Washington D.C. 15 years ago when President George W. Bush appointed him to a position at the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA). Founded in 1965, NEH is an independent grant-making institution of the U.S. government dedicated to supporting research, education, preservation, and public programs in the humanities. Peede was born and raised in Brandon. Since his father was a surgeon and his mother was director of medical records, he loved medicine during his youth and went to Vanderbilt University to prepare for a medical career. During high school, he interned at Rankin General Hospital in the surgery ward. During college, he worked for a summer at the VA Hospital in Jackson and worked part-time at the nephrology lab at Vanderbilt during the school year. But he eventually decided that his calling was to a writer and editor, not a doctor. "I come back to this wonderful quote from Zora Neale Hurston and she was asked about research and she said it's formalized curiosity and so a lot of times I say to people at the end of the day I'm in the business of curiosity."