John Hood
President, John William Pope Foundation
John Hood is president of the John William Pope Foundation, a Raleigh-based grantmaker that supports public policy organizations, educational institutions, arts and cultural programs, and humanitarian relief in North Carolina and beyond. Hood also serves on the board of the John Locke Foundation, the state policy think tank he helped found in 1989 and led as its president for more than two decades. Since 1986, Hood has written a syndicated column on politics and public policy for North Carolina newspapers. It currently appears regularly in the Winston-Salem Journal, Greensboro News & Record, Wilmington Star-News, and newspapers in 50 other communities. A frequent radio and television commentator, Hood is the author of seven nonfiction books on such subjects as business, advertising, public policy, and political history. His most-recent books are Mountain Folk (2021, Forest Folk (2022), and Water Folk (2024),…