For my last day job, I served as an advisor to Morton Blackwell, a noted conservative leader, special assistant to President Ronald Reagan at the White House and the president of the Leadership Institute, which trains the next generation of conservative leaders. I provided Mr. Blackwell with a comprehensive evaluation of Leadership Institute programs and made a series of recommendations on structural and personnel changes that led to a major reorganization of Institute programs and leadership.

In turn, Mr. Blackwell shared with me generously his enormous experience and insight, and taught me all that I know today about politics. I am indebted to him for his instruction and friendship.

I continue to volunteer my time to the Institute and remain a financial contributor.

I was also formerly a Senior Foreign Policy Fellow at Discovery Institute in Seattle and Washington, D.C. and a frequent op-ed contributor to The Seattle Times and RealClearPolitics (links to my op-eds are found here).

Prior to these positions, I worked in the private sector and the academia.

I hold a master’s degree from the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Pittsburgh and double-majored in international relations and economics at Brown University. I am a graduate of Stuyvesant High School (the old building, of course!) in NYC.

I was born in Seoul, Korea and spent my youth there.

I edit this blog, NoVaPolitics.com and occasionally guest-blog on DPRK Studies, a weblog about North Korea and the surrounding region.

In addition, I co-founded The Korea Liberator (now inactive), which rapidly became the leading Korea policy weblog in the United States until its unfortunate demise. Other blogs I ran in the past are Guns and Butter Blog and The Asianist (now both inactive).

I brake for guns, dogs and MMA!

[Latest note: This blog remains inactive due to personal changes I have experienced in the past year, but I plan to return to blogging again in the future.]

Richard Falknor, an occasional contributor to NoVaPolitics.com, is a writer, journalist, and a close student of those American and British conservatives who continue to influence modern times. For nearly 15 years, Falknor managed an independent weekly health-business newsletter from the publication’s Prince Frederick, Maryland. office. This five-reporter publication became the ‘bible’ of the home health care industry.

Falknor gained substantial hands-on government experience as an aide to Senator Henry M. Jackson and to a House investigating and Senate legislative committee, then as a policy staffer with U. S. Department of Transportation and the Consumer Product Safety Commission.

The American Political Science Association named Falknor a Congressional Staff Fellow enabling him to attend Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government where he received his M.P.A. in 1967.

A graduate of the Phillips Exeter Academy and the University of California at Berkeley, he received the Army Commendation Medal for his work editing the Seventh Army newspaper in the Cold War Germany of the late 1950s.

Married to Susan Freis Falknor, a professional editor and a published poet, long-time Marylander Falknor keeps his Free State roots, but now lives near the Blue Ridge in Loudoun County.

Today Falknor serves as Executive Vice President of the Maryland Taxpayers Association, Inc.,
and chairs the Maryland Center-Right Coalition.  He is an occasional columnist for virginianewssource.com and authors BlueRidgeForum.

Stay Tuned!