Nearly three years ago, the earliest iteration of the Neoliberal Project came about. It was in the form of a forum where economics undergraduate students could gather to discuss economics and the policy implications of the field. We called the forum r/neoliberal. We didn’t name our forum that to make a political statement from the outset, but because we wanted to poke fun at people who had previously called us that word. But quickly, people began joining at a far greater rate than we ever expected. They weren’t joining to discuss econometrics, as we originally intended. People were joining because they desired a place to discuss policymaking online that wasn’t captured by left or right-wing populists. We were radical incrementalists – as we called ourselves – and it was different from anything else out there. We knew we were onto something, and created the Neoliberal Project to launch new initiatives and house them all under one banner.

Since then, we have launched a Twitter account that now boasts 34k followers, a meetup network in 20 cities with thousands of attendees, a podcast with over a quarter of million downloads, dozens of Facebook groups and Exponents, our magazine and newsletter. We ran the Neoliberal Project with next to no money for much of its existence. Website and travel expenses had to come out of our own pockets. Everyone who has contributed to the Neoliberal Project up until this point as done so as a volunteer. I’m eternally grateful to those people, who are the only reason where we here today.

I’m proud to announce a new chapter of the Neoliberal Project today. Today, we are officially joining the Progressive Policy Institute (PPI). PPI is a storied think tank based in Washington, DC that traces it origin back as the brain trust of the Bill Clinton administration and now works with pragmatic Democrats to solve today’s toughest solutions.