New Bridges: Texas

George Gilder is Chairman of George Gilder Fund Management, host of the Gilder Telecosm Forum, founding Member of the Board of Advisors for the Independent Institute, and author of the acclaimed, new book, The Scandal of Money: Why Wall Street Recovers but the Economy Never Does, on the secret to putting the U.S. back on the fast track to widespread prosperity.

Mr. Gilder pioneered the formulation of supply-side economics when he served as Chairman of the Lehrman Institute's Economic Roundtable, and he is a former Fellow at the Kennedy Institute of Politics at Harvard University and former Program Director for the Manhattan Institute. In 1986, President Ronald Reagan presented him with the White House Award for Entrepreneurial Excellence.

He is the author of hundreds of articles and many bestselling books, including the highly influential Wealth and Poverty, The Spirit of Enterprise, and Microcosm. A Fellow of the International Engineering Consortium, he is a contributing editor of Forbes Magazine and a frequent writer for The Economist, American Spectator, Harvard Business Review, Wall Street Journal, and other publications.

President of the Goodman Institute, Senior Fellow at the Independent Institute, and author of the acclaimed, Independent books, A Better Choice: Healthcare Solutions for America, and the award-winning, Priceless: Curing the Healthcare Crisis, The Wall Street Journal and National Journal have called him the “Father of Health Savings Accounts.”

“In A Better Choice, John Goodman has written an eye-opening analysis of the many problems with Obamacare and has proposed common-sense solutions.”
—Pete Sessions, Chairman, Committee on Rules, U.S. House of Representatives

“Nancy Pelosi famously told us that we could find out what was in the Affordable Care Act once it passed. It is now five years later, and thanks to its convoluted concepts and its thousands of pages of rules and regulations few have wended their way through the ACA, and still fewer understand what it all means. Fortunately John Goodman, an expert on the American health system and a perceptive analyst, has studied the Act and has written the insightful book A Better Choice, that reveals what is in the ACA, what is wrong with it, and what could and should be done to provide cost-effective healthcare to our citizens.”
—June E. O’Neill, former Director, Congressional Budget Office

Research Fellow, Independent Institute; author, Choice: Cooperation, Enterprise and Human Action; Research Assistant Professor, Free Market Institute, Rawls College of Business, Texas Tech University.

“Choice is great . . . much needed.”
—Gene Epstein, Economics Editor, Barron’s

“No one working today rivals Robert Murphy in his superb book, Choice: Cooperation, Enterprise and Human Action, with an all-too-rare, lively writing that engages as well as instructs the general public. . . . Choice is something quite unique. . . . Any reader of this book will learn both the important basic truths about the science of economics and the crucial value of individual choice, entrepreneurship, and free markets.”
—Donald J. Boudreaux, Professor of Economics; Senior Fellow with the F.A. Hayek Program for Advanced Study in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics; George Mason University

Research Fellow, Independent Institute; Co-Editor and Managing Editor, The Independent Review; Co-Editor, Future: Economic Peril or Prosperity?; and Professor of Economics, Wake Forest University.

“Strategic thinking requires understanding of the impact and implications of our present decisions, and predictions for the next fifty years can be a valuable way to critique the state of our world today. The fascinating book Future: Economic Peril or Prosperity? succeeds admirably in provoking and informing about the directions our choices may take us. Those who fail to think about the future are destined to repeat the mistakes of the past!"
—Garry Kasparov, 13th World Chess Champion; Chairman, Human Rights Foundation

"Future provides a roadmap for adopting the essential measures of liberty, entrepreneurship, and innovation. I highly recommend everyone read this pioneering book.”
—Rand Paul, M.D., U. S. Senator

Senior Vice President of the Independent Institute and a columnist for The Huffington Post, Ms. Theroux received her A.B. in economics from Stanford University. She is Managing Director of Lightning Ventures, L.P., a San Francisco Bay Area investment firm, and Vice President of the C.S. Lewis Society of California.

Having been a director of nine corporations and three foundations, Ms. Theroux was also Chairman of Garvey International, Inc., and Co-Founder, President, and CEO of San Francisco Grocery Express, Ltd. Articles on her have appeared in Business Week, Forbes, Savvy, Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, and other publications. She is former Chairman of the Advisory Board for the Alameda County Salvation Army; former Chairman and current member of the San Francisco Salvation Army Advisory Board, and also serves on the National Advisory Board of The Salvation Army.

Joshua J. Umbehr is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Atlas Medical MD. He received his M.D. from the University of Kansas School of Medicine and completed his family medicine residency at Wesley Medical Center in Wichita, KS. Atlas Medical MD is a highly innovative, low-cost, direct-practice, concierge service for the general public and provides an ideal medical practice where doctors are able to reduce the counterproductive burdens and restrictions of government and insurance regulation so they can focus solely on their patients and serve their needs.

Dr. Umbehr and Atlas Medical MD have been featured in such national media as Time, Money, CNN, Fox News Channel ("Hannity," "Your World with Neil Cavuto," "Huckabee," "Morning Report"), NPR, "Rush Limbaugh Program," Breitbart, and Drudge Report.