Barbara Jean Elliott

Barbara J. Elliott is the author of five books and scores of articles published in the US and Europe. Barbara was an international television correspondent for PBS in Europe. She reported on the events that culminated in the fall of the Berlin Wall and then launched a private initiative to help people fleeing communism. The result became the book Candles Behind the Wall: Heroes of the Peaceful Revolution that Shattered Communism.

Barbara received the Eleanor Roosevelt Award for Human Rights from President George W. Bush in 2001 for her outreach to refugees fleeing communism in Eastern Europe and for serving America's needy.

After her return to the US, she served as a Senior Fellow for the Hudson Institute, Senior Fellow for the Saginaw Institute, Senior Fellow for the Council of Leadership Foundations, and Senior Lecturer with the Catherine of Siena Institute. She is now President of the Center for Cultural Renewal, which she founded in 1997. Her research on faith-based nonprofits throughout the nation resulted in her Street Saints: Renewing America's Cities.

She is a Fellow of the Dominican School of Philosophy and Theology, from which she received the Doctor of Humane Letters. For 14 years she served as Assistant Professor in the Honors College of Houston Christian University, where she led Socratic seminars and lectured on the intersection of faith, art, and culture in the Western tradition. She earned a Master of Arts degree in Theology from the University of St. Thomas.

In 1980 she was appointed by President Ronald Reagan to serve in The White House as Deputy Special Assistant in the Office of Public Liaison, where she directed programs on the White House economic program for leaders of the business community. Prior to that she served on Capitol Hill as Director of Legislative Information and liaison to the House and Senate for the Heritage Foundation. She previously served as the director of Hillsdale College's Center for Constructive Alternatives and the editor of Hillsdale's journal of ideas, Imprimis.

Barbara is a member of the Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter at the Cathedral of Our Lady of Walsingham in Houston. She is married to W. Winston Elliott III, who is the Director of the Shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham and the Publisher of The Imaginative Conservative. Together they have four children and nineteen grandchildren.