For more than half a century, The Heritage Foundation has been committed to training future conservative leaders to carry the torch of freedom into the next generation through the Young Leaders Program, the Academy, our Capitol Hill Internship Program, the Local University Conservatives Network, and, most recently, the new High School Fellowship.

Recently, we added the Rising Leaders program to our series of leadership development programs. With Rising Leaders, Heritage selects a small number of outstanding young professionals to join us in January at Awakening. 

Abby Kassal
Abby is a student at the University of Alabama School of Law. Abby is a University of Texas-San Antonio grad with degrees in Politics & Law and Criminal Justice.  Abby has already been recognized for her leadership and academic performance with an Archer Fellowship, a John Jay Fellowship, and an internship with Heritage’s Edwin Meese Center for Legal and Judicial Studies.

Samantha Kelley
Samantha is an athlete, mentor, author, speaker, and founder of FIERCE Athlete. She holds a Master's degree in Catholic Psychology and a Certification in Strength & Conditioning, and she has studied Theology of the Body extensively. Through FIERCE Athlete, she and her colleague Tracy Guerrette are reaching female athletes, coaches, and parents across the world with a focus on building a positive and faithful culture in female athletics.

Dr. John Rhee
Dr. Rhee a Neuro-Oncology Fellow at Mass General Cancer Center and Dana Farber Cancer Institute. John is a graduate of Cornell University and the Icahn School of Medicine where he was a Dean’s Scholar in Global Health and an inductee into the Gold Humanism in Medicine Honors Society.  Amid all this great academic and clinical work, Dr. Rhee founded the Hippocratic Society – a new effort that reaches students, trainees, and doctors in an effort to transform healthcare at the individual level by providing the tools these doctors and future doctors need -- to aim for higher ideals, to grow in professional development and character, to form meaningful relationships, to work at their best, and to find space for reflection and recollection.