Justin King
Policy Director, Asset Building Program
Justin King is policy director of the Asset Building Program at the New America Foundation, which aims to promote policies and ideas that significantly broaden access to economic resources through increased savings and asset ownership, especially among lower-income families. In this position, he works to develop and advance innovative public policies that expand economic opportunity by broadening asset ownership. Previously, he served as the program’s federal policy liaison. He works closely with the leadership of New America to devise and advance innovative policy efforts and communications strategies in all areas of assets and savings policy. He is responsible for connecting with the Congressional Savings and Ownership Caucus, which was launched with the support of New America in February 2005.
Prior to joining the Asset Building Program, Mr. King served as Deputy Director of the Workforce and Family Program at the New America Foundation, where he lead the effort to increase the visibility and popularize the use of the Child Well-Being Index, America's foremost long-term, aggregate measure of child welfare. Mr. King also was Senior Policy Analyst for the Education Policy Program at New America. In that capacity, he focused on efforts to create a coordinated system of high-quality early education available to all children, beginning at age three. He authored several policy briefs and served as a regular contributor to www.higheredwatch.org, the Education Policy Program's higher education blog, and assisted in the development of the Federal Education Budget Project website.
Mr. King spent over six years as a legislative assistant to former U.S. Senator James Jeffords (I-VT). Over the course of his work in Senator Jeffords' office, he worked extensively on both the Senate Finance and Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committees. He was responsible for a wide range of issues affecting children and low-income Americans, including Head Start and the Child Care and Development Block Grant, welfare reform, child welfare, adoption, foster care, disability policy, and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. Mr. King participated in the House/Senate conferences that produced the No Child Left Behind Act and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act of 2004. He is a cum laude graduate of St. Lawrence University, where he earned a bachelor's degree in government.