Richard Sousa
Senior Associate Director and Research Fellow

Expertise: Labor economics, specializing in discrimination, labor market issues, and K–12 education

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Richard Sousa is senior associate director, director of the library and archives, and a research fellow at the Hoover Institution. He has been at Hoover since 1990.

Sousa, an economist, specializes in human capital, discrimination, labor market issues, and K–12 education. He coauthored School Figures: A Look at the Details behind the Debate (2003). Using facts and figures, this volume provides a concise and understandable analysis of the state of K–12 education in the United States. He is also the coeditor of Reacting to the Spending Spree: Policy Changes We Can Afford, an early assessment of what the Obama administration is facing and how it is reacting to the economic crisis of 2008–9.

His op-eds have appeared in newspapers including the San Francisco Chronicle, Dallas Morning News, Houston Chronicle, Dayton Daily News, and Providence Journal; his recent articles have appeared in School Reform News and the Hoover Digest.

As director of the Hoover Library and Archives, Sousa oversees the acquisitions, preservation, access, outreach, and publications programs. In addition to being responsible for the major upgrade to the archives preservation and conservation lab, he has been intimately involved with major acquisitions such as the Chiang Kai-shek diaries, the William Rehnquist papers, the Lithuanian KGB files, and the Iraq Memory Foundation collection. As senior associate director, Sousa works with the Institution’s director to develop institutional policies, strategy, long-range planning, and external communications.

He was responsible for the launch of the Institution’s major communications initiatives: Hoover Digest: Research and Opinion on Public Policy, Education Next: A Journal of Opinion and Research, the Hoover Weekly Essays, the Facts on Policy and Focus on Issues series, and Uncommon Knowledge™ (the Institution’s television series). From 1990 to 1995, Sousa was the coordinator of the Diplomat Training Program.

Sousa previously held positions at UCLA, Welch Associates, and Unicon Research Corporation. Sousa was an economist at the RAND Corporation and has taught economics and statistics at UCLA. He has testified in class action legal cases and served as an economic consultant to major firms throughout the country.

Sousa holds degrees from Boston College and UCLA in economics.