Seay the Future Podcast

John Thune grew up in Murdo, South Dakota. His interest in politics was sparked at a young age after making five of six free throws during a freshman high school basketball game. He was later greeted by a spectator who said, “I noticed you missed one.” That spectator happened to be a well-known sports enthusiast and then-South Dakota U.S. Rep. Jim Abdnor. The introduction was the start of a friendship that ignited John’s career in public service.

John received his undergraduate degree at Biola University and his master’s degree in business administration from the University of South Dakota. Upon completion of his master’s degree in 1984, he married Kimberley Weems, a native of Doland, South Dakota.

John’s attraction to public service took him to Washington, D.C., to work for that sports enthusiast and then-U.S. Sen. Jim Abdnor. He then served at the Small Business Administration under an appointment from President Ronald Reagan.

In 1989, John and his family returned to South Dakota, where he served as the executive director of the South Dakota Republican Party. In 1991, then-Gov. George S. Mickelson appointed him to be state railroad director, a position he held until 1993, when he became executive director of the South Dakota Municipal League.

In 1996, with a shoestring budget and the support of family and friends, John won his first term as South Dakota’s lone member of the U.S. House of Representatives. John was re-elected to a second term by the largest margin in South Dakota history. He returned again to Washington in 2001 to serve his third term in the House.

John then honored his 1996 campaign pledge to serve only three terms in the House. After a narrow loss in a U.S. Senate race in 2002, he won his current Senate seat in 2004, when he made history by defeating a sitting Senate party leader for the first time in 52 years.

In 2010, John was elected to serve a second term in the Senate in a rare unopposed race. He was only the third Republican and the only South Dakotan to run unopposed for the Senate since direct elections were created in 1913. John was elected to a third term in 2016.

For the 117th Congress, John serves on the Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry Committee; the Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee; and the Finance Committee. He serves as ranking member of the Commerce Committee’s Subcommittee on Communications, Media, and Broadband and ranking member of the Finance Committee's Subcommittee on Taxation and IRS Oversight. He also serves as the Senate Republican whip, the number two position in Senate Republican leadership, and has previously served as chairman of the Senate Republican Policy Committee from 2009–2011 and chairman of the Senate Republican Conference from 2012-2018.

John and his wife Kimberley live in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, and they have two grown daughters and five grandchildren. In his free time, John enjoys spending time with his family, pheasant hunting, and running.

Lee Bratcher is the Executive Director for the Institute of Global Engagement at Dallas Baptist University as well as a faculty member teaching international relations and blockchain courses. Lee received a blockchain instructors certification from IBM and researches blockchain solutions in land administration. He is a Captain in the US Army reserves working as an instructor for ROTC cadets at DBU and UT Dallas. Lee was awarded a master’s in International Relations from St. Mary’s University and is in his fifth year as a Ph.D. candidate at UT Dallas writing a dissertation on blockchain for land administration. Prior to his transition to academia, Lee served in the military and as a police officer in the DFW area. 

He conducts the business operations of the Texas Blockchain Council and maintains strong relationships with members of the Texas Legislature and their staff. As the organization’s president, Lee serves as an ex-officio member of all policy and legislative committees within the Texas Blockchain Council.

Tom Cotton is a United States Senator from Arkansas. Tom’s committees include the Judiciary Committee, where he serves as the Ranking Member for the Subcommittee on Criminal Justice and Counterterrorism, the Intelligence Committee, and the Armed Services Committee, where he serves as the Ranking Member of the Air Land Power Subcommittee.

Tom grew up on his family’s cattle farm in Yell County. He graduated from Dardanelle High School, Harvard, and Harvard Law School. After a clerkship with the U.S. Court of Appeals and private law practice, Tom left the law because of the September 11th attacks. Tom served nearly five years on active duty in the United States Army as an Infantry Officer.

Tom served in Iraq with the 101st Airborne and in Afghanistan with a Provincial Reconstruction Team. Between his two combat tours, Tom served with The Old Guard at Arlington National Cemetery. Tom’s military decorations include the Bronze Star Medal, Combat Infantry Badge, and Ranger Tab.

Between the Army and the Senate, Tom worked for McKinsey & Co. and served one term in the House of Representatives.

Tom and his wife Anna have two sons, Gabriel and Daniel.

Read or Listen to his latest work, The Exotic, on Scribd here: https://www.scribd.com/author/563966787/Hampton-Sides

Narrative historian Hampton Sides is the New York Times bestselling author of Ghost Soldiers, Blood and Thunder, Hellhound on His Trail, In the Kingdom of Ice, and On Desperate Ground. He is a contributing editor to Outside magazine and a frequent contributor to National Geographic and other publications. His work has been collected in numerous anthologies, and he is a two-time finalist for the National Magazine Award for feature writing. Hellhound on His Trail, about the murder of Martin Luther King Jr. and the hunt for his killer, was the basis for the acclaimed PBS documentary Roads to Memphis. Sides lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Michael Eisenberg is co-founder and General Partner at Aleph, an early stage venture capital fund with over $500 million under management. Michael has been a venture capitalist for twenty-five years. Aleph focuses on partnering with great Israeli entrepreneurs to build large, meaningful companies and impactful global brands. Since its founding in 2013, Aleph has invested in more than forty companies, including Melio, Lemonade, Bringg, JoyTunes, Healthy.io, and Nexar.

Since 2006, Michael has been writing the blog Six Kids and a Full Time Job, on topics ranging from politics to technology, Judaism, and macroeconomics. He was a contributor to TheMarker, a Hebrew-language daily business newspaper, and is the author of the “The Hummus Manifesto,” the seminal piece on Israel’s innovation scene. Michael has also published five books in Hebrew: The Vanishing Jew, Ben Baruch, The Tree of Life and Prosperity, Everyone can be Moses, and Roaring Tribe. He lectures frequently on venture capital, Israel, and entrepreneurship. He serves on the board of the nonprofit organization Yeshivat Har Etzion and is the chairman of The Shomer Hachadash. Michael lives in Jerusalem with his wife and eight children.

We are back for Part Two with Avik Roy, President of FREOPP based in Austin, TX. In this episode, we dive into healthcare policy solutions, the future of healthcare, and more about his current work with the Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity (FREOPP). Enjoy!

Avik Roy is the President of the Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity (FREOPP).

Avik was born to Indian immigrants in Rochester, Michigan, a place that instilled in him a lifelong fondness for the Michigan Wolverines and the Detroit Red Wings. He finished high school in San Antonio, Texas, where USA Today named him to its All-USA High School Academic First Team, honoring the top 20 seniors in the country.

After training as a scientist at MIT and as a physician at Yale Medical School, Avik moved to Boston to join a then-unknown investment firm called Bain Capital, where he focused on identifying biotechnology companies developing therapies for diseases that had heretofore gone untreated.

In 2009, as President Obama’s health reform bill was being debated in Congress, Avik started a blog about health care policy. “I couldn’t find anything to read that I agreed with, so I started writing it myself.” Avik’s blog, The Apothecary, was soon picked up by Reihan Salam at National Review, and Matt Herper at Forbes. In 2012, Avik joined Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign as a health care policy advisor. By 2014, Avik was Forbes’ Opinion Editor, and Meet the Press’ Chuck Todd was calling Avik “the go-to policy wonk critic of the health care law…the guru.”

In 2015, Avik moved to Austin, where he ran the foreign and domestic policy shops for Texas Governor Rick Perry’s presidential campaign. In that capacity, Avik was also the lead author of Gov. Perry’s major policy speeches. The Wall Street Journal called Perry’s address on intergenerational black poverty “the speech of the campaign so far.” Later in the primaries, Avik advised Florida Senator Marco Rubio.

Avik has been a central figure in the debate over how to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic. The plan he developed with his FREOPP colleagues for reopening the U.S. economy while COVID-19 endures changed the debate about whether partial reopenings were possible in the spring and summer of 2020. A second plan, focused on safely reopening schools and colleges, shaped policies around the country in the fall of that year. “A source close to the White House said officials were closely watching his recommendations for addressing the coronavirus pandemic,” noted Business Insider in 2020.

Season Two of Seay the Future is coming in August 2021. Stay Tuned!

We are back for Part Two of our Special Edition Interview with George Seay.  Tune in as Brendan Steinhauser and Julia Dvorak turn the tables on our host and ask George the tough questions. Stay tuned for some comic relief at the end of the episode!

For this special edition episode, our production team turned the tables and interviewed our host, George Seay! Tune in as Brendan Steinhauser and Julia Dvorak ask George the tough questions in this special, two-part episode.