Eve Velasquez

Eve Velasquez is a Research Associate at the Cicero Institute, where she works on state-level healthcare policy, including Certificate of Need reform, scope of practice, and nutrition policy. She co-authored Cicero’s “U.S. FoodGrade and SNAPSmart” proposal and presented research at the Cato Institute’s Health Policy Workshop. Eve holds a Master of Public Policy from Pepperdine University, specializing in Applied Economics and International Relations and National Security, and a B.A. in Political Science from California State University, Long Beach. She is a graduate of the Health Reformers Academy and serves on the Steamboat Institute’s Emerging Leaders Council.

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What is your current position?

I’m a Research Associate at the Cicero Institute, where I primarily work on state-level healthcare policy. My work includes research, legislative analysis, writing, and policy development, with a particular focus on healthcare access, competition, and nutrition policy.

What inspired you to choose this career path?

Growing up, I wanted to be a psychologist because I thought that was the best way to help people. When I started college during my junior year of high school, I declared psychology as my major. I got into politics after watching YAF videos on YouTube, which prompted me to sign up for my first conference in the spring of 2019. When I got back to campus, I set out to start a chapter at my community college. It took an entire semester. I had to make my case before the student club council, explain that socialism and communism still exist in other countries, and read the Sharon Statement aloud before we were finally approved.

I came to public policy somewhat unexpectedly. I switched my major to political science with an emphasis in political theory because I knew very little about the subject and wanted to challenge myself. I was also disenchanted with the progressive psychology classes offered. During my last year at Cal State Long Beach, I took a public policy course and thought policy memos were incredibly boring and a waste of time.

Everything changed at Pepperdine’s School of Public Policy (SPP). I fell in love with public policy once it connected to concrete problems that plagued communities. In graduate school, I specialized in applied economics and in international relations and national security. I chose economics because I wanted a rigorous way to test policy ideas and evaluate outcomes, and I knew it could open doors. I looked at SPP’s website, saw that the projected careers included think tank research analyst, state policy researcher, government consulting, and PhD prep, and thought, “Yeah, I could do that.”

Recently, someone asked me, “So why did you get punished with healthcare?” I was attracted to healthcare because it seemed like one of the most complex policy areas. State and federal programs, payment systems, provider types, licensing structures, and competing incentives all overlap, and understanding the system is difficult before you even begin trying to improve it.

My interest in health and nutrition made that challenge especially compelling. Cicero ended up bringing those interests together in a way I never could have planned for myself. I began there as a Law & Policy Fellow and joined the Institute full-time after graduating in April 2026.

What are you currently working on?

At Cicero, much of my current work focuses on free-market healthcare solutions. In October, McKenzie Richards and I published the 2026 Playbook for Certificate of Need Repeal, which ranks CON laws in all 50 states and Puerto Rico. I’m now working on our pharmacist full practice report as part of our rural health transformation work.

Earlier this year, I co-authored U.S. FoodGrade and SNAPSmart, which looks at ways to make nutrition information more useful and food-assistance incentives more closely aligned with healthier choices.

Most of the time, I work on state healthcare reforms involving competition, access, scope of practice, and model legislation, but Cicero gives me opportunities to work across policy areas. In early October, I joined our homelessness and public-safety team in Los Angeles during Operation Save Skid Row, where I captured photo and video from the federal enforcement action and attended Mayor Karen Bass’s press conference at the LAPD headquarters.

Outside of my day-to-day work, I am learning about welfare and human services at the Human Flourishing Academy. I’m also continuing my education through Claremont’s Telos Academy, where I am studying how regimes rise, decay, and change through thinkers ranging from Plato and Aristotle to Tocqueville. I also serve on the Steamboat Institute’s Emerging Leaders Council.

How did you hear about the Claremont Institute?

Claremont was in my intellectual orbit for years before I really knew the Institute itself. I first encountered the broader Claremont world through conservative conferences and through professors I respected. At Pepperdine, Steven Hayward assigned Claremont-related readings and talked about the Institute, and I knew several professors with ties to the Claremont graduate community.

I did not really understand the Institute’s fellowship programs until Dean Peterson shared information on the Publius Fellowship in January 2026. Once I was admitted, I started connecting the dots and realized that I had already encountered several Claremont-affiliated scholars at conferences without fully appreciating the connection.

What is your fondest memory of the Claremont Institute?

My fondest memory took place in Newport Beach on the charter boat. Don McLean’s song blared over the speakers as we gathered at the bow. We belted out “American Pie” as the sky grew darker. It was the 250th birthday of our beautiful country. I had never felt so patriotic in my life.

There are all sorts of educational programs out there for current and rising conservative professionals. What do you think makes the Claremont Institute’s Fellowships unique?

At Claremont, I really felt at home intellectually. Publius gave me a chance to study the different strands of conservative thought, trace their underlying premises, and evaluate where they agree and where they diverge.

What I especially appreciated was Claremont’s willingness to examine the conservative movement from within. Harry Jaffa did not simply ask how conservatives could present a united front; he challenged other conservatives to reconsider their premises, particularly on natural rights, historicism, the Declaration, and Lincoln. That helped me put words to disagreements I had sensed before but had not been able to articulate clearly.

Claremont takes ideas seriously enough to allow real disagreement, while continually returning to the principles of the American Founding.

If you could have a fireside chat with an American Founder, or any great thinker, who would it be, why, and what would you discuss?

I’d choose Thomas Jefferson because I admire his eloquence and his defense of religious liberty. He was an inventor and a university founder, and he articulated a vision of an agrarian republic where people would be self-sufficient and self-governing. We would talk about how he thinks that vision would fare under industrialization and modern technology, and what those changes have done to our culture. I would also ask about the personalities, friendships, rivalries, and disagreements among the Founders. I’m curious which conflicts were truly philosophical or political, which were personal, and how much temperament mattered. I’d explain the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, and once he got the hang of the system, we’d discuss further. And as a fellow Lutheran, I’ll borrow Mollie Hemingway’s answer from her own Claremont spotlight: “As for other thinkers, I’d really like to have a drink with Martin Luther. … Luther was a world-changing historical intellect and theologian, but he also seems like a fun guy to knock a few back with.”

Who was more important for their time, George Washington or Abraham Lincoln? Why?

Abraham Lincoln was more important for his time. Some argue the two are equivalent or reject the question, but Lincoln’s task of uniting a fractured, divided country was far more daunting. Lincoln had prudence and a mind for logic, but more importantly, he had the grace to speak of “American slavery” in his Second Inaugural Address, treating it as a national offense rather than the South’s alone. He could have used the speech as a victory lap; instead, he sought to mend a splintered union.

In which one of the original 13 colonies, looking back on history, would you have wanted to live and why?

I probably would’ve ended up in Virginia. I am drawn to its landscape, architecture, intellectual culture, and agrarian life. I like the independence and responsibility that come from living off the land, and coming from California, it would be nice to see the seasons change.

What would the artifact be, if you could hold one piece of history from the early founding of our country and why?

Most people would say the Declaration of Independence, but I’d choose the portable writing desk Jefferson designed and used to draft it. My dad is a custom woodworker, and my parents and I have talked about making portable desks ourselves. I love beautiful craftsmanship, and I think many people have lost the art of writing. I enjoy good stationery and fountain pens, and Jefferson’s desk would make a nice addition to my collection of things normal people don’t use anymore.

What qualities do you believe are necessary to make an impressive statesman/woman in this century and why?

In Book 3 of the Politics, Aristotle distinguishes the ruler from the ruled. Both need virtue, but “prudence is the only virtue peculiar to the ruler.” He judges a ruler by asking a simple question: who are you ruling for? Statesmanship is not bending others to your will but serving the good of the whole. That requires prudence: the judgment to see what a particular moment demands. But knowing what is right is not enough. C.S. Lewis says it best: “Courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point, which means, at the point of highest reality.” Without courage, you can’t have good statesmen. Governing oneself remains the prerequisite to governing others.

What do you believe are the most important issues currently facing healthcare policy in the United States?

I think one of the biggest problems in American healthcare is that we have spent decades arguing over who should pay for healthcare without doing enough to address why care costs so much in the first place. Patients are often disconnected from the price of the care they receive, and government policies and reimbursement rules have created incentives that make healthcare look very little like a functioning market.

I have talked to moms who went into labor without knowing what the bill would be and who were still trying to understand what they owed nearly a year later. In America, with all of our technology, how is that acceptable? Patients should know prices before treatment and actually benefit when they choose lower-cost, higher-value care. States should remove rules that block new providers and new forms of care, including Certificate of Need laws, restrictive scope-of-practice rules, and unnecessary barriers to telehealth across state lines.

I am also extremely optimistic about clinical AI. I do not think its promise is limited to giving existing providers better tools; I think AI may eventually be capable of providing some forms of care itself. Policymakers should take real risks seriously and build appropriate guardrails, but I worry much more about prematurely closing off innovations that could make healthcare cheaper, more accessible, and higher quality. If we can give patients more information, more choices, and more providers competing to serve them, I think we can begin putting the patient back at the center of healthcare.

What books are you currently reading?

I am always reading too many books at once. Usually I have a book on Kindle that I read while traveling, which at the moment is Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment. Of the physical books that I carry around, John D. Kelleher’s Deep Learning and David Goldhill’s Catastrophic Care have been in circulation. I am perpetually working my way through Robert Caro’s biographies of Lyndon Johnson on Audible. I strongly disagree with much of Johnson’s politics, but Caro’s account of how he understood, accumulated, and wielded power is instructive. Lastly, my husband and I have started reading Harry Jaffa’s Crisis of the House Divided by taking turns reading paragraphs out loud to each other.

What book, movie, or speech has left a lasting impression on you and why?

Surprisingly, one of the stories that has stayed with me most is Holes by Louis Sachar. I first read it in elementary school, and the image I remember is the boys at Camp Green Lake being required to dig a hole five feet wide and five feet deep every day. The first day Stanley, the main character, arrived at camp, he thought the task was impossible. His hands hurt and blistered, and he woke up the next day having to do it all again. Stanley had to dig; he had no option out. There was no free hall pass from the nurse saying he couldn’t dig that day because his hands were blistered; every “camper” had to do his required digging.

The book, and later the movie, shaped how I think about grit. It wasn’t the only place I learned about grit, but it gave me a powerful image of fighting through pain and discomfort. You can dig the hole even when your hands are blistered. You just have to keep going, and eventually you get stronger.

Do you have a favorite quote and if so, would you share?

One of my favorite quotes is John Adams’s line to Abigail: “I must study Politicks and War that my sons may have liberty to study Mathematicks and Philosophy. My sons ought to study Mathematicks and Philosophy, Geography, natural History, Naval Architecture, navigation, Commerce and Agriculture, in order to give their Children a right to study Painting, Poetry, Musick, Architecture, Statuary, Tapestry and Porcelaine.” I think Adams is right in his ordering of the hierarchy of goods. Politics and economics are not ends in themselves but means to support worship, family, friendship, leisure, beauty, and culture.

In drafting these responses, I was reminded of Lewis’s quote about friendship in The Four Loves: “Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art, like the universe itself (for God did not need to create). It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things which give value to survival.” Lewis also observed, “To the Ancients, Friendship seemed the happiest and most fully human of all loves; the crown of life and the school of virtue.” Like Lewis, I believe that many modern people have not fully experienced friendship, or what Aristotle would consider the highest form of friendship: the virtuous friendship. In the digital age, where it’s easier to send memes that say “this made me think of you,” we must try even harder to cultivate virtuous friendships face to face, for it is these relationships that make life worth living.

What is the most distinctive attribute/character of the people in the state where you grew up that you genuinely admire?

I grew up primarily in California, and what I admire most about Californians is the instinct to build something new and make things better. California can make it very hard to build and do business, yet people keep doing it anyway. People start companies here and develop innovative technologies, and people still move here despite the costs because the quality of life is unbeatable. Everyone loves to criticize California, but when they visit, a surprising number of them end up saying, “Man, I really wish I could live here.”

What is your favorite cultural/recreational pastime (or hobby) and why?

Soccer runs in my family. My grandfather is in his eighties and still gets out on the field, and my mom still plays. I love the beauty of the game. I also love surfing, skateboarding, weightlifting, photography, and being outdoors, and I recently picked up the guitar again after not really playing since middle school. I think I am happiest when I am learning a skill, making something, or doing something physical enough that I have to be fully present.

Where do you see yourself and this country in five years?

I am hesitant to pretend I know exactly what my life or the country will look like in 2031, especially at the current pace technology is moving.

Personally, I hope I am still doing meaningful policy work, understand healthcare far better than I do today, and have found opportunities to teach. I am less interested in predicting the exact title I will hold than in becoming wiser, more useful, and better educated. I also hope my life is more rooted: more time at home, more reading, a stronger local community, a strong marriage, and openness to whatever season God places me in.

For the country, I am most interested in what AI and the next wave of technology will yield. I am very optimistic that AI can make people more productive, reduce busywork, expand access to expertise, and give ordinary families capabilities that once required entire teams or specialized professionals. But greater productivity raises a deeper question: if we reclaim our time from tasks we dread, what will we do with the time and abundance it creates? My hope is that we use it to make more room for family, neighbors, worship, learning, meaningful work, and the other things that make a life fulfilling. I do not know exactly where America will be in five years, but I hope to be doing my part to make that future better.