The Texas Catholic Conference has named Michael Barba as its associate director of public policy. Barba will assist Executive Director Jennifer Carr Allmon in serving as a representative of the Roman Catholic bishops of Texas before lawmakers.
Barba provides public policy guidance to Texas dioceses, schools and parishes in order to connect Catholic social teaching with political action. He also collaborates with coalitions of Texans who support public policies aligned with the vision of the Catholic Conference.
Prior to serving at the Texas Catholic Conference, Barba was a policy analyst at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, where he focused upon public education, school finance and educational choice. He was the primary author of "Texas School Finance: Basics and Reform," which sheds light upon a complex topic in the hope of aiding Texas children.
He also served as an analyst for Citizen Tools, a small Austin startup that published non-partisan explanations of public policies. Prior to this, he held a fellowship at the National Center for Policy Analysis, where he studied healthcare, education and tax policy.
Born and raised in El Paso, Barba completed his undergraduate education at the University of Dallas, where he majored in philosophy and politics. He is currently writing his master’s thesis, "Answering Doubts of the Young: Book X of Plato’s Laws," for the University of Dallas.