Kim Crockett: President and General Counsel

Kim Crockett, President and General Counsel

Prior to joining the Minnesota Free Market Institute, Kim served as corporate counsel to a national bank and had a long legal career in commercial real estate.

Kim, who is an enthusiatic student of the American Revolution and the written U.S. Constitution, has been a member of the Federalist Society since 1984 when she founded the student chapter at Penn Law in Philadelphia. She is currently Chairman of the Minneapolis Lawyers Chapter. She has a B.A. in Philosophy from the University of Minnesota and a J.D. from Penn.

Kim also started a small business with her husband in 2004 where she serves on the board. Kim is a member of the Deephaven City Council and chairman of the five-city Excelsior Fire District. She has served Governor Tim Pawlenty as an appointee to Minnesota Compensation Council and the Minnesota Supreme Court as member of the Committee on Minnesota’s Code of Judicial Conduct.

Kim “has issues” with relaxation, but when she is not reading or working, she might be found in the garden or on the slopes depending on the season. She is a devotee of pilates/yoga despite the attendant jibber jabber.

A native of Minnesota, Kim is married to Brian Crockett and has two children, Will and Katharine.

Policy Fellow: John LaPlante

John R. LaPlante, Fellow

Since 1998, policy fellow John R. LaPlante has written on a range of public issues, including economic development, government-sponsored enterprises, and transportation.

His projects have included managing a healthcare policy website for State Policy Network, writing reports and commentaries on K-12 education for the Kansas Policy Institute, and commenting on think tanks for the St. Paul Legal Ledger/Capitol Report. He holds an M.A. in political science from The Ohio State University.

He is a contributor to The Michigan View, a state-focused equivalent to National Review, written by members of the Detroit News editorial board and a few selected others. He has been published in the Star-Tribune, Kansas City Star, and other media outlets.

A resident of Dakota County, he was a member of a coalition that twice addressed questions of the structure of local government. Each time, voters accepted the coalition’s viewpoint, the second time by a vote of 80 to 20 percent.

John enjoys mountain biking in the summer and snowboarding in the winter. He is also an officer in the North American Snowsports Journalists Association and a member of the American Association of Snowboard Instructors. He is married and has one child.

Policy Fellow: Susan Shogren Smith

Susan Shogren Smith, Fellow

Susan Shogren Smith is a graduate of the Blake Schools and attended Carleton College, the College of St. Catherine and Metro State University. She received her JD from the University of St. Thomas School of Law where she founded the student chapter of the Federalist Society and served as the chapter’s president

Prior to becoming an attorney, she worked as an Early Childhood Coordinator for the Pacer Center and was also the director of a program that served children who are Deaf or Blind and their families. Susan’s professional and personal interests have always centered on children. She and her husband have served as foster parents to several children with special needs and have fostered to adopted three of those children. She has a deep knowledge of state and federal health and human services programs, as well as educational programs and funding for children with specials needs. Susan has been married for 20 years and has 9 children.

Interns

Dan Willey, a junior at Brandeis University and Erin Kelly are interns at the institute.

Help wanted

We are looking for new Policy Fellows and a part-time Webmaster/Office Manager. And we are always interested in guest posts. If you are interested, please contact Kim Crockett via email  kimc@mnfreemarketinstitute.org

The Minnesota Free Market Institute taps the resources of Policy Fellows with scholarly credentials and practical experience in a wide variety of pursuits from economics to corporate management, legal studies to litigation, and grassroots activism to government policymaking. Our Policy Fellows are scholars, lawyers, journalists, teachers, business executives and technologists. The Free Market Institute integrates the theoretical knowledge and practical experience of its Policy Fellows through projects that bridge the divides among theory, research and policy.

Among the nations of the world the United States is unique in that to call oneself “American,” one need not be of a specific race or ethnicity. Bloodline makes a Frenchman a Frenchman, an Englishman an Englishman, a Chinaman a Chinaman, but an “American” is defined by belief in the existence of self-evident truths… “That all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness – That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the Consent of the Governed…”

The Founders did not require of man or woman that they pursue happiness in any specific manner, observe any particular religion or even hold any specific moral values. They only decreed that one acknowledge the “self-evident” truth of the essential equality of all human beings and that governmental power flowed from the people to the government. The Minnesota Free Market Institute aspires to no other standard.

Beyond unwavering faith in the self-evident truths expressed by the founders, a sincere desire to limit government to its proper role and trust that free market approaches to issues of the day inevitably produce more and wider spread prosperity than the collective, centrally planned economies, there is no ideological litmus test for Minnesota Free Market Institute Fellows. Fellows are chosen for their knowledge, experience and ability to integrate research and practical experience into a free market approach to policymaking. Disagreement and debate on policy among Fellows is welcomed and encouraged.

Kim Crockett, President