President
Mike Nichols is president of the Badger Institute. From 2009 to 2013, he was a senior fellow at the institute, syndicated newspaper columnist and communications consultant.
A graduate of Boston College and the University of Chicago, Nichols is the author of numerous papers and articles focusing on public policy, including an analysis of data-driven policing, failures in special education funding and accountability, problems and misspending in the Milwaukee Public Schools’ parental outreach program, the high cost of technical college labor contracts, public campaign financing, fraud in the FoodShare program, problems with discord and lack of productivity on the Wisconsin Supreme Court, rampant expansion of the School Lunch Program, the limitation of public subsidies of business, union influence on school boards, positive environmental impacts of the frac sand industry and conservatism in central Wisconsin.
Nichols is also the author of “The Waking,” a mystery published by HarperCollins, and “Just a Few Sleeps Away,” a work of non-fiction focusing on the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. He spent almost 20 years as an award-winning newspaper reporter and columnist for newspapers in Illinois and for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, where he often wrote about Wisconsin policy, politics and people. He lives in Milwaukee with his wife. They have three children.
