Research Advisor / Policy Advisor

High Trust America is building a conservative research and policy institution focused on one central question:

What conditions allow a free people to govern themselves successfully—and how do we rebuild those conditions where they have weakened?

We are recruiting a small initial group of volunteer Research Advisors and Policy Advisors to help answer that question.

This is not a ceremonial advisory title.

We are looking for people who can help us understand what happened, challenge weak assumptions, identify useful evidence, pressure-test proposed solutions, and turn serious research into ideas that governors, legislators, local leaders, candidates, and civic institutions can actually use.

High Trust America is an openly conservative project for American self-government.

We begin from several convictions:

• Freedom requires responsibility.

• Rights and duties belong together.

• Stable families and strong communities are public strengths.

• Equal justice requires rules that are actually enforced.

• Free markets depend on honest dealing and meaningful consequences for fraud.

• Government should do fewer things poorly and the necessary things well.

• Local institutions and voluntary associations should be protected where they can solve problems better than distant bureaucracy.

• Constitutional government depends on a culture capable of sustaining it.

• Trust should be earned through trustworthy behavior, not demanded as an act of political loyalty.

We are therefore looking primarily for advisors who broadly share a conservative, classical-liberal, constitutionalist, federalist, libertarian-conservative, or traditional American self-government perspective.

That does not mean we are looking for people who agree with us on every policy.

In fact, disagreement is part of the job.

An advisor should be willing to tell us when a conservative argument is unsupported, when the evidence points somewhere inconvenient, when a proposed policy would fail in practice, or when we have misunderstood the problem.

We want intellectual alignment on the mission, not intellectual obedience.

The end product is not another collection of white papers.

High Trust America intends to build research that can influence actual governing decisions.

Our work will examine questions such as:

• Why has social and institutional trust weakened in the United States?

• Why have some states and communities remained safer, more stable, more competent, or more cohesive than others?

• Which policies strengthen or weaken public order, family stability, honest dealing, competent government, work and opportunity, and civic life?

• Which institutions still earn trust, and what do they do differently?

• Which incentives reward fraud, disorder, dependency, corruption, or institutional failure?

• What can a governor, legislature, county, city, school board, sheriff, civic organization, or community leader realistically do about it?

• How do we measure whether those actions actually worked?

The goal is to move from:

Understand what broke → Build what works → Advocate until it changes.

Our long-term ambition is for conservative leaders to come to High Trust America when they want to know not merely what position to take, but how to make their communities safer, more competent, more stable, more prosperous, and more worthy of public trust.

We are interested in advisors from a wide range of professional backgrounds.

Particularly useful experience includes:

• Public Policy & Government
• Former elected officials, legislative staff, policy analysts, agency leaders, municipal officials, public administrators, and people who understand how policy actually gets implemented.
• History & Political Thought
• Researchers or serious students of the American Founding, constitutional history, republican government, federalism, civic virtue, institutional development, and American political history.
• Economics & Markets
• Economists, business leaders, entrepreneurs, fraud investigators, financial professionals, and researchers interested in incentives, economic mobility, regulation, property rights, and institutional trust.
• Crime, Public Safety & Justice
• Law-enforcement leaders, prosecutors, defense attorneys, criminologists, corrections professionals, emergency managers, and researchers studying crime, disorder, repeat offending, and public safety.
• Family, Community & Civil Society
• Researchers and practitioners working in family formation, marriage, education, churches, civic associations, volunteer organizations, veteran communities, philanthropy, and local institutions.
• Government Performance & Institutional Competence
• People with experience in budgeting, auditing, procurement, organizational design, program evaluation, public-sector technology, regulatory systems, and operational reform.
• Data & Research Methods
• Statisticians, social scientists, data analysts, economists, survey researchers, quantitative researchers, and others capable of helping us distinguish real patterns from political narratives.
• Practitioners

We specifically do not want an advisory network composed only of academics.

Sheriffs, teachers, pastors, business owners, military leaders, nonprofit executives, physicians, parents, local officials, investigators, operators, and others with direct experience are encouraged to participate.

Real institutions frequently behave differently than datasets suggest.

We want both forms of knowledge.

Depending on background and availability, advisors may:

• Review draft research and policy papers

• Recommend datasets, literature, historical sources, or experts

• Identify weaknesses in methodology or causal claims

• Participate in virtual research discussions

• Serve on temporary research panels

• Help develop State Trust Profiles

• Pressure-test proposed policy recommendations

• Review implementation plans with practitioners

• Contribute essays or issue briefs

• Introduce researchers, policymakers, donors, institutions, or other advisors

• Help identify communities and states worth studying

• Challenge assumptions before they become institutional positions

Participation can range from occasional review to substantial involvement in a specific research project.

Political orientation does not excuse bad research.

High Trust America will:

• Show sources for important factual claims

• Distinguish measured facts from judgment and recommendation

• Use the best available data rather than selecting statistics that produce a preferred headline

• State important assumptions

• Compare states and time periods consistently

• Correct errors publicly

• Disclose meaningful conflicts of interest

• Refuse to change standards simply because they produce politically inconvenient results

We are not trying to become ideologically neutral.

We are trying to become factually reliable.

Those are different things.

A conservative institution becomes more useful—not less—when policymakers know inconvenient evidence will not be hidden.

You may be a strong fit if you:

• Broadly support ordered liberty, constitutional self-government, free enterprise, strong families, public order, local institutions, and limited but competent government

• Believe American institutions should earn trust through performance and accountability

• Are interested in solving problems rather than merely describing political decline

• Can disagree constructively

• Care more about getting the answer right than winning an internal argument

• Can translate research into practical decisions

• Are comfortable working with academics and practitioners

• Want your work to have an eventual effect on public policy and institutional behavior

You do not need to belong to a political party.

You do need to understand that this is an explicitly conservative institution and be comfortable contributing within that mission.

This is not:

• A partisan loyalty test

• A campaign staff position

• A social-media debate club

• A place to manufacture evidence for conclusions already decided

• An honorary advisory board built around impressive names

• An academic project designed primarily to produce publications that nobody uses

We are trying to build something that matters outside the organization.

This is currently an unpaid volunteer advisory role during the founding stage.

There is no fixed weekly-hour requirement.

Some advisors may review one paper every few months. Others may participate regularly in a particular workstream or eventually lead research initiatives.

As the organization develops funding, certain research projects, fellowships, consulting engagements, or permanent roles may become compensated. Volunteer service should not be understood as a promise of future employment or compensation.

Advisors are non-fiduciary and do not automatically speak for or endorse every position taken by High Trust America.

Please send a brief introduction that includes:

• Your professional or academic background

• The subjects where you believe you could contribute meaningful expertise

• Why the problem of declining trust or weakening self-government interests you

• A short example of a policy, institution, community, or historical question you believe High Trust America should investigate

Formal academic credentials are valuable but not required.

Evidence of judgment, expertise, real-world experience, and serious thought matters more.

Understand what broke. Build what works. Advocate until it changes.

Trust cannot be demanded. It must be earned.