Heritage Foundation Leadership for America

A long-time veteran of Washington policymaking, Mike Franc oversees The Heritage Foundation's outreach to members of the U.S. House and Senate, their staffs, as well as top-ranking Administration officials. 

As Heritage's Vice President of Government Relations, his extensive political knowledge and expertise is highly sought by leading news sources such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, the Baltimore Sun, the Boston Globe, the Chicago Tribune, the Christian Science Monitor, the Financial Times, the Miami Herald, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Seattle Times, and USA Today as well as regular appearances on national broadcast news outlets.

Franc's writings also appear regularly in outlets such as National Review Online. From 2003 to 2008, Franc was a columnist for Human Events, giving the newspaper's 154,000 weekly readers the inside scoop on Congress and the ups and downs of the conservative agenda.

Franc first joined Heritage in 1993, serving as its Director of Congressional Relations. He left in 1996 to become Communications Director for House Majority Leader Richard Armey of Texas . He returned to Heritage as Vice President of Government Relations in February 1997.

Before his first Heritage tour, he served in the Office of National Drug Control Policy and as legislative counsel for then-Rep. William Dannemeyer (R-CA).

Franc graduated from Yale University in 1979 with a bachelor's degree in history. He earned his law degree from Georgetown University in 1983. A native of New York 's Lower East Side, Franc lives in Washington , D.C. , with his wife and four children.