Meet John

John Tillman is one of the nation’s most prominent leaders in the free-market, public-policy arena. He is CEO of the American Culture Project, an organization that attracts, educates and mobilizes independent voters around the ideas of freedom and opportunity.

John is best known for building the Illinois Policy Institute (IPI), which he currently chairs, into one of the most influential state-based think tanks in the country while he was CEO from 2007 to 2021. IPI was a key part of the coalition that defeated Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s progressive income tax in 2020.

While leading IPI, he co-founded and served as chairman of Liberty Justice Center, which won the precedent-setting Janus v. AFSCME case before the U.S. Supreme Court in 2018.

John has founded and chairs numerous other enterprises within the liberty space. As chairman of the Franklin News Foundation beginning in 2017, he turned a near-insolvent operation into a media powerhouse that has news bureaus in every state and Washington, D.C. Their newswire service, The Center Square, is republished in hundreds of newspapers throughout the country has a daily readership of 2.2 million.

John is also the co-founder and chairman of Iron Light, a full-service, for-profit digital marketing agency, which does work for more than 75 nonprofits across the conservative public policy space.

“John Tillman is one of the most cogent voices in the battle over culture in America today. He runs groups that I think have had a really significant role in highlighting the role the teachers’ unions have had in changing the education system as well as other unions around the world.”

–John Solomon, of John Solomon Reports (Sept 2023)
“John is CEO of the American Culture Project and chair of the Illinois Policy Institute, which under his leadership between 2007 and 2021 became one of the most influential state think tanks in the country.”

–Ben Wilterdink, Program Director, Archbridge Institute and co-editor of Profectus
“John Tillman is the founder of Illinois Policy Institute and there’s no sharper political mind that I know than John’s.”

–Stephen Moore, Club 4 Growth Founder, Heritage Economist, Wall Street Journal writer
“You’re very familiar with the liberty space, and you’re one of the titans of it and have founded a lot of different organizations and have really been working hard here for quite a while now.”

–Ben Wilterdink, Program Director, Archbridge Institute and co-editor of Profectus