Merrill Matthews, Ph.D., is a resident scholar with the Institute for Policy Innovation, a research-based, public policy “think tank.” He is a health policy expert and weekly contributor at Forbes.com. He also serves as Vice Chairman of the Texas Advisory Committee of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.

Dr. Matthews is a past president of the Health Economics Roundtable for the National Association for Business Economics, the largest trade association of business economists. Dr. Matthews also served for 10 years as the medical ethicist for the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center’s Institutional Review Board for Human Experimentation, and has contributed chapters to several books, including Physician Assisted Suicide: Expanding the Debate and The 21st Century Health Care Leader and, in 2009, Stop Paying the Crooks (on Medicare fraud).

He has been published in numerous journals and newspapers, including The Wall Street Journal, Investor’s Business Daily, Barron’s, USA Today, Forbes magazine and the Washington Times. He was an award-winning political analyst for the USA Radio Network.

Dr. Matthews received his Ph.D. in Humanities from the University of Texas.

Holly Randall serves as Associate Counsel with the First Liberty Institute.

Holly graduated summa cum laude from the Oklahoma City University School of Law, where she was recognized as the Outstanding Graduate for the Class of 2021 and a Sumners Foundation Scholar. During law school, she externed at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit, worked as a research assistant to Dean Jim Roth, served as president of the OKC Student Lawyers Chapter of the Federalist Society, and published her Note, From Peyote to Parenthood: Why Employment Division v. Smith Must(and Might) Go, as a member of the Oklahoma City University Law Review. Holly spent her summers as a legal intern at the First Liberty Institute.

Holly received her bachelor’s degrees in Political Science and Spanish from Oklahoma City University in 2018, graduating summa cum laude, cum honore, and was a member of the OCU Women’s Volleyball team.

Holly is licensed to practice law in Oklahoma.

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