Romina Boccia is director of budget and entitlement policy at the Cato Institute, where she specializes in federal spending, budget process, economic implications of rising debt, and Social Security and Medicare reform. Boccia was previously director of the Grover M. Hermann Center for the Federal Budget at the Heritage Foundation, where she was the principal author of the organization’s flagship budget plan: Blueprint for Balance. She also contributed chapters to the book A Fiscal Cliff: New Perspectives on the U.S. Federal Debt Crisis and the peer‐​reviewed publication Homo Oeconomicus: Journal of Behavioral and Institutional Economics.

Boccia was most recently managing director at Dialog, an invite‐​only, elite leadership network cofounded by Peter Thiel and Auren Hoffman, that curated off‐​the‐​record conversations and transformative retreats for 1,000 global leaders in political, business, tech, military, creative, and academic disciplines from over 50 countries. Prior to Heritage, Boccia was a policy analyst at the Independent Women’s Forum. She cofounded the Washington, D.C.–based public speaking organization Liberty Toastmasters, and she currently serves on the board of America’s Future.

Boccia is a native of Augsburg, Germany, and received M.A. and B.S. degrees in economics from George Mason University.