
Douglas D. Monroe, III
Executive Director
After a long career as an investment banker in the U.S. in mergers and acquisitions and private equity, Doug began a full-time effort to establish the Praxis Circle as a non-profit, educational organization dedicated to building worldviews.

Maria Brent Jones
Maria is a graduate Collegiate School (1976) and the University of Virginia (1980). While raising a family she took graduate philosophy courses in the M.L.A. program at the University of Richmond and volunteered extensively in her community. She has been assisting Doug with establishing Praxis Circle since 2015.

Mason New
Mason is the current founder and owner of NewVia, LLC, an education technology consulting and design company. He is also the designer and manager of the Praxis Circle’s online education.

Raegan Alpaugh
Raegan was homeschooled while her parents served as missionaries overseas. She graduated summa cum laude at Virginia Commonwealth University (2020), where she received a B.A. in English. She has extensive experience in the non-profit world and manages Praxis Circle’s content and engagement strategies.

Advisory Board
John Cohen
Chairman
JC has spent his career in the the jewelry industry at Carlyle & Co. He is a graduate of Woodberry Forest School, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the Gemological Institute of America, and the Young Executive Institute at UNC-CH.
He began his career at Carlyle & Co. as a store manager and eventually became its Co-CEO, guiding it to become an industry leader in retail jewelry sales. During his tenure, he facilitated its becoming a publicly-traded organization. JC has been a guiding light in the jewelry industry, serving on the Board of Directors, Executive Committee, and Chairman for Jewelers of America, and the Board of Directors of Jewelers Security Alliance. He has been inducted into the National Jewelers Hall of Fame. He currently serves on the Board of Directors of Reeds Jewelers.
JC’s additional activities have included serving on the Board of Directors of Woodberry, the Greensboro Merchants Association, the Greensboro Country Club, the Hospice and Palliative Care, and the Morehead Scholarship Regional Selection Committee. He is currently on the Executive Committee of the Board of Directors of the Jewish Federation of Greensboro.
JC is married and has two grown daughters.
Jim Bacon
Having spent 25 years in journalism in Virginia, Jim has been the Vice President – Publishing with the Boomer Project, the publisher of Virginia Business magazine, and, most recently, a senior editorial writer for the Richmond Times-Dispatch. As well as contributing writing to the Washington Times, he has published a book entitled Boomergeddon.
Jim is married and the father of two grown children.
Anne Bradley
Dr. Anne Bradley is the George and Sally Mayer Fellow for Economic Education and the Vice President of Academic Affairs at The Fund for American Studies. She served as the Vice President of Economic Initiatives at The Institute for Faith, Work, and Economics (IFWE), where she developed and commissioned research toward a systematic biblical theology of economic freedom. Anne graduated cum laude with a B.S. in Economics from James Madison University in Harrisonburg, VA. She attended George Mason University in Fairfax,VA, where she earned both her M.S. (2002) and her Ph.D. (2006) in Economics.
After receiving her Ph.D., Anne joined the CIA as an economic analyst in their Office of Terrorism Analysis. She was editor and contributing writer to IFWE’s Counting the Cost: Christian Perspectives on Capitalism (2017) and For the Least of These: A Biblical Answer to Poverty (2015). In these works she looks at income inequality from both economic and biblical perspectives. She is currently writing a book that focuses on the industrial organization of al-Qaeda. Anne is also published in many scholarly journals and edited volumes.
In addition to her time at The Fund for American Studies, Anne teaches at the Institute for World Politics, Grove City College, and George Mason University, where she previously served as the Associate Director for the Program in Economics, Politics, and the Law at the James M. Buchanan Center. She has also taught at Georgetown University and Charles University in Prague. She is also currently an Acton Institute affiliate scholar and visiting scholar at the Bernard Center for Women, Politics, and Public Policy.
Anne currently resides in Loudon County, VA, with her husband, and young son and daughter.
Don Bush
During his career, Don has been a special library assistant to Dr. Billy Graham, director of curriculum development in distance education at the Reformed Theological Seminary, a gang intervention specialist and community resource consultant in the City of Alexandria, Virginia; a legislative clerk for VA State Senator Patsy S. Ticer; and a U.S. Congressional campaign manager in Virginia’s 5th District. For the past decade, Don has focused his efforts on training a new generation of leaders to support the economic and cultural revitalization of the Republic of Armenia.
He is one of the nation’s leading experts on bullying prevention and he the author of Bully-Bully/BP3: The Bullying Prevention Peace Program. His published work has appeared in The Washington Post, Psychology Today, Forbes, and a variety of other print publications.
Don is married and the father of four children.
Allen Corey
Allen returned to Chattanooga and joined the Miller & Martin law firm, becoming a partner primarily practicing corporate and business law; he remained with the firm until 1996. While there he became familiar with the business side of brewery restaurants and craft breweries.
Allen left Miller & Martin in 1996 to become CEO of Big River, a small brewery restaurant chain that he had done the legal work for and invested in, when the micro beer industry was in its infancy. Big River then expanded rapidly and formed CraftWorks Restaurants & Breweries Inc., the largest brewery/restaurant chain in the U.S.
After selling CraftWorks, he and his partners started SquareOne Holding, a company that provides consulting, management, and capital for every aspect of opening and running restaurants or breweries themselves.
He has served as a trustee for the Baylor School, a co-chair (with his wife) of the Fast Day fundraiser for Community Kitchen in Chattanooga, a member of the Executive Committee of the Board for the Chattanooga Convention and Visitors Bureau, and a member of many other for-profit and not-for profit boards.
Mr. Corey is married and the father of two adult daughters.
Mary Eberstadt
Mary Eberstadt is an editor and author who focuses on a wide range of issues concerning politics, Christianity, the family, and female roles in Western society. She graduated magna cum laude from Cornell University (Philosophy, Government) where she was a four-year Telluride scholar.
Mary is currently a Senior Research Fellow at the Faith and Reason Institute in Washington, D.C. She has been a research fellow at the Hoover Institution and a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, DC. Mary focuses on issues of American society, culture, and philosophy. She has written widely for various magazines and newspapers, including Policy Review, The Weekly Standard, First Things, The American Spectator, Los Angeles Times, London Times, and The Wall Street Journal.
She has also authored a number of books, including It’s Dangerous to Believe: Religious Freedom and Its Enemies and her most recent book Primal Screams: How the Sexual Revolution Created Identity Politics.
In addition, Mary was the founder of the Kirkpatrick Society, a literary network for women and named after her late mentor, U.N. Ambassador Jeanne Kirkpatrick. She is engaged with several non-profit and charitable groups, including The Merry Beggars, an association of young Catholic artists creating transformative theater; Our Lady of Guadalupe Parish in Togo, Africa, led by Rev. William Ryan; the Catholic Information Center; and Dominican House of Studies in Washington, DC. She has been a Trustee of Telluride Association, and spent five years on its Board of Custodians. Mary has also served on the Academic Board of Advisors to the Templeton Foundation. She is the recipient of numerous awards and honors.
Mary is married to Nicholas Eberstadt, author and economist, and they have four children.
Frank Hill
Frank ran for Congress at the age of 28 from Durham, NC. He was chief of staff to former Congressman Alex McMillan (NC-9) from 1985-1995 and Senator Elizabeth Dole (NC) from 2002-2004. Prior to working on the Hill in D.C., he worked in private business and has lobbied and consulted over the years in between stints in government.
Frank is the founder and director of the Institute for Public Trust in Raleigh which recruits and trains great new people to enter elective politics. In addition, he writes a blog, Telemachus, which focuses on politics and concentrates on the federal budget, tax policy, and health care. He is also managing editor of the opinion page for the North State Journal, NC’s only publication covering the entire state.
He has been married for over 36 years and has three sons, two of whom are married, and one grandchild.
Maria Brent Jones
Maria worked for First National Exchange Bank in Roanoke, VA and then Walter M. Dixon, Investment Counsel, before retiring to raise a family. She and her daughter Emily owned and ran the Strawberry Street Vineyard Wine Shop for several years before Maria joined Doug at Praxis Circle.
She has been active in the volunteer world, including serving on the Junior Board of Sheltering Arms Hospital, the Board of Trustees of Steward School, and the Foundation Board of Steward School.
She is married and has three grown children and one grandson.
Doug Monroe, III
He is also a graduate of the University of Virginia Schools of Law and Business (1982) where he received his J.D. and his M.B.A. In addition, Doug passed the N.C. Bar Examination and earned his C.P.A. designation.
After a long career as an investment banker in the U.S. in mergers and acquisitions and private equity, Doug began a full-time effort to establish the Praxis Circle as a non-profit, educational organization dedicated to the pursuit of worldview knowledge.
Doug is married and the father of three adult children and five grandchildren.
Lady Sophie Scruton
Sophie and her late husband Roger established Horsell’s Farm Enterprises as a “post-modern rural consultancy” that provides guidance to commercial and non-profit enterprises in areas such as countryside maintenance and the environmental science of a sustainable grass economy. This business led them to also establish Athelstan Farm Foods which produces cheeses using traditional Wiltshire recipes for wholesale customers in the area. They have also written extensively about these topics and associated issues for magazines such as The Spectator and other outlets.
The Roger Scruton Legacy Foundation was recently created to serve as the center of an international network of institutions and scholars dedicated to furthering the philosophical and cultural achievements of the West championed in Scruton’s work.
It will hosting and sponsoring lectures, events, seminars, research, and projects.
Sophie has served as a District Councillor for the North Wiltshire District Council and as a Council member for the Athelstan Museum in Malmesbury.
She was married to Sir Roger Scruton from 1996 until his death in February 2020. They have two children.
Walter Smith
Walter has also been Senior Vice President, General Counsel, Compliance Officer, and Secretary at Hilb, Rogal & Hobbs; Managing Director at Dawson Companies; and Managing Director at Tabb, Brockenbrough & Ragland LLC. In addition, he was Executive Vice President and Counsel at AssuredPartners, Inc.
Walter is married and has five children.
Hugh Whelchel
After a successful thirty-year career in the IT industry, Hugh became the Executive Director and a professor at the Reformed Theological Seminary. He is also an ordained ruling elder in the Presbyterian Church of America.
Hugh authored the book How Then Should We Work? Rediscovering the Biblical Doctrine of Work, as well as many articles that have been published in the Washington Post and Christianity Today, among other publications. He has served as Executive Director and board member at The Fellows Initiative and served on numerous boards of other Christian non-profits.