Guiding the Mission. Advancing the Vision.

After serving as President of the Clare Boothe Luce Center for Conservative Women for more than 30 years, the Luce Center Board elected Michelle Easton to serve as Chairman in March 2024. She founded the organization in 1993 as the Clare Boothe Luce Policy Institute, which puts forward conservative women role models who promote traditional family values and prepares young women for conservative leadership.

CBL also produces an annual calendar and hosts campus lectures, conferences, seminars, and summits featuring and honoring rising conservative women leaders. Prior to founding CBL, Michelle received Presidential appointments from both Presidents Reagan and George H. W. Bush with Senate confirmation for her position at the U.S. Department of Education, serving the full 12 years of their administrations. During the Reagan Administration she also served as Private Voluntary Liaison of the Agency for International Development’s Africa Bureau and as the first Director of President Reagan’s new Missing Children’s Program at the U.S. Department of Justice. In 1994, Virginia Governor George Allen appointed Michelle to the State Board of Education, whose members later elected her president of the Board. She led the Board to create nationally acclaimed academic standards, tests, and a rigorous new system of accountability for both students and schools.

Prior to her government service, Michelle worked five years for Young Americans for Freedom and two years for National Right to Work, putting herself through law school at night to graduate from American University’s Washington School of Law in 1980. She received her BA in development psychology from Briarcliff College in New York where she briefly taught elementary school before moving to Washington, D.C., in 1973.

Michelle is the author of How to Raise a Conservative Daughter (2021), a book that outlines principles learned from decades of working with young conservative women. With today’s toxic social media, radical indoctrination in schools, and a left-wing popular culture, this book will support parents with proven strategies to raise daughter who love and honor America and its traditional values. Michelle travels widely to promote conservative principles and speaks at conferences, meetings, and campus events. She has been interviewed on hundreds of talk radio programs and television programs, including C-SPAN.

She and her husband, Ron Robinson, have three grown sons and three grandchildren.

Kimberly Begg is president of the Clare Boothe Luce Center for Conservative Women. An attorney with more than 25 years of experience strengthening conservative causes, her long history with the Luce Center began in the 1990s when she was a student at Rutgers University. In 1997, she attended the Luce Center’s College Women’s Luncheon in Washington, DC and hosted a Luce campus lecture the following year. She has been a regular speaker for the Luce Center since the 2000s and has served on the Center’s board of advisors and board of directors.

She is the author of Unbreakable: Saints Who Inspired Saints to Moral Courage (TAN Books) and co-author with Mike Ortner of Catholic School Playbook (Word on Fire).

She has served as vice president and general counsel of Young America’s Foundation and director of programs and general counsel of the Ortner Family Foundation.

She helped found Young America’s Foundation’s Be Not Afraid seminar (originally, the Standing Up for Faith and Freedom seminar), an annual program for students at Catholic schools, in 2015.

From 2021 to 2024, she served as founding editor of Catholic School Playbook, a website documenting the best practices of thriving Catholic schools.
She serves on the board of directors of Young America’s Foundation, the board of overseers of the Dominican House of Studies, and the DC board of regents of Thomas Aquinas College.

She lives in Herndon, Virginia, with her husband, Ian, and their five children.

As co-founder and president of Hoplin Jackson Charitable Advisors, Nicole Hoplin helps her clients create more impact with their charitable giving, and, in so doing, makes giving away wealth as joyful and fulfilling as creating it. Nicole’s boutique philanthropic advising company grew out of her 17 years of working with individuals, families, and private foundations to connect them with the nonprofit programs that reflect their most treasured values and produce extraordinary results. During these nearly two decades, Nicole raised millions of dollars and used her formal education to help donors work through sensitive topics such as succession planning and how to engage the next generation of family members in charitable giving. She is a philanthropy thought leader, having spoken in forums across the country about the impact generous donors can make in our country.

Nicole coauthored Funding Fathers: The Unsung Heroes of the Conservative Movement (Regnery Publishing) with Ron Robinson, president of Young America’s Foundation. The book shares the stories of ten prominent entrepreneurs who made the most important philanthropic gifts to advance free enterprise and liberty. Nicole is also the co-author of the Ten Secrets of Successful Giving, a publication designed to share tips and advice with donors who seek to maximize their impact through their charitable giving.

Nicole dedicated many years as a vice president at Young America’s Foundation, the organization responsible for saving and preserving President Reagan’s historic California ranch. She cultivated relationships with more than 200 supporters to identify their philanthropic priorities and connect them with programs that aligned most with those interests.

Nicole acquired a Master in Public Policy degree with an expertise in nonprofit management and leadership summa cum laude from the University of Minnesota and a Bachelor of Arts degree from St. Olaf College. Together with her husband, Eric, they are raising their three boys in Oakton, Virginia. She currently serves on the Reagan Ranch Board of Governors, on Young America’s Foundation’s Board of Directors, and as the co-chair of her church’s Free to Dream bridge campaign.

Camille Hart is an experienced event planner and writer with over 15 years of work in high profile environments, including the White House, the Pentagon, and in non-profit organizations. Camille began her career in 2002 as an intern assisting the staff of the White House Travel Office with the logistics of travel arrangements for the President of the United States, his staff and the White House Press Corps. She subsequently worked as Media Coordinator at the Pentagon in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, serving under both Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Secretary Robert Gates. As Public Affairs Specialist, Camille planned strategic outreach events for the more than 250 military charities, including key events at the Pentagon and White House.

In 2007, Camille brought her organizational and writing skills to the non-profit world. She served as Events Director at the Clare Boothe Luce Center for Conservative Women for thirteen years. In this capacity, she oversaw all logistics of the events and conferences of the organization, and authored and produced written materials, newsletters, and reports for the Center.

Camille is a graduate of Texas Christian University and lives in Texas with her husband and their two young children.

Clare Luce is the granddaughter of Henry Luce, founder of Time, Inc., and the namesake of Clare Boothe Luce with whom she traveled extensively in the latter part of her life. Born and raised on the north shore of Long Island, Clare was educated in New York, Massachusetts and Rhode Island. She moved to San Francisco in 1981 and worked as a freelance photographer and then as a writer/producer for The Epicurean Lifestyle, a local television show that featured the finest restaurants and wineries in the Bay Area.

In 1986, Clare met Cliff Abbey. They traveled Europe, married in 1988 and started San Francisco 415 Co., designing and manufacturing sportswear under the labels Agnelli, Sutter’s and Ivy Brown. Along the way, their dream of owning a vineyard in the Napa Valley came to fruition in 1991 when they bought a property with an eight-acre hillside vineyard near St Helena. After ten years of replanting and commuting on weekends, Clare and Cliff sold their company and moved to St Helena to take on the viticulture venture full time. Their goal was to make a world class Cabernet Sauvignon from their own fruit. Tying her past to the present, the emblem on the wine label pays homage to the Presidential Medal of Freedom bestowed upon Clare Boothe Luce by President Reagan in 1983. In 2005, Cliff was diagnosed with early onset Alzheimers, which precipitated the eventual sale of the wine label and vineyard in 2008. He passed away in 2012.

Clare’s philanthropic interests include the San Francisco Symphony, the Ronald McDonald House, the Center for the Pacific Rim at the University of San Francisco, the Fire Arts Museums of San Francisco, and the St Helena Hospital Foundation.

Kate Obenshain Keeler, author of Divider in Chief: The Fraud of Hope and Change, is a popular speaker and commentator on national television and radio shows. Kate has spent her career championing expanded liberty in America, and impressing upon young people an understanding of the blessings of freedom.

Formerly a vice president of Young America’s Foundation, she has been speaking on college campuses for 30 years, has appeared on Fox News, CNBC, and MSNBC, has written for numerous publications and been on hundreds of radio shows. Kate served as chairman of the Virginia GOP from 2003 to 2006, when she led the fight against tax increases and the expanding role of government; as advisor to former Governor George Allen, and as his Senate chief of staff; and as vice chairman of the Virginia State Council for Higher Education.

In 2004, she founded the Jennifer Byler Institute, a leadership training program for women in Virginia. She is currently a board member of Young America’s Foundation–the organization that owns President Reagan’s Ranch–and the Clare Boothe Luce Center for Conservative Women, and serves on the advisory boards of the McShin Foundation and the Virginia Conservative Women Coalition. She has served on the NRA’s National School Shield Advisory Board and the Steamship Institute’s Advisory Board.

Kate is a regular speaker for gatherings—civic, corporate, educational, and religious—all across the country, and is known for her inspirational style. Her most treasured role, however, is that of mother to six grown children. Currently, she resides in Cape Charles, Virginia with her husband.

Sarah Rindlaub joined the Board of Directors in 2017. A graduate of Agnes Scott College, Sarah began her professional life as program coordinator/event planner at the Hoover Institution. Her career path shifted two years later when, seeking to support U.S. military personnel, she became a flight attendant on Military Air Command flights to bases in Vietnam and throughout the Pacific. In the years since, Sarah has worked for charter and commercial passenger airlines serving in various positions including senior international flight attendant, training instructor, and corporate sales. A survivor of two separate airline crashes, she brought rare, first-hand experience to her work as emergency training instructor for several international airlines in the U.S. and Asia. Her interest in public policy has been constant, and she's been active in community-oriented organizations at home and abroad.

Sarah is co-founder of Women of Washington, a Washington-state educational organization dedicated to communicating America's founding principles to women with a focus on understanding local, national, and global issues that are critical to our world today. She is also a current Board member and past Chairman of the Washington Policy Center, one of the largest free-market state-based think tanks in the nation.

Sarah and her husband, John, have three daughters and one grandchild. After spending the past five years in Hong Kong, they returned to their permanent residence in Washington state.

As a child, Marjory (Marji) Grant Ross dreamed of being one of two things: either the editor of The Wall Street Journal or a Broadway singer. She went on to become the first person outside the Regnery family to ever hold the title of President of Regnery Publishing, initially joining the company as vice president and general manager in 1999. Prior to that, she was a senior group publisher for Phillips International, where she ran several business units, including investment newsletters, business newsletters, and health newsletters. She graduated from Dartmouth College with a BA in English in 1981, and earned her Masters in Journalism from American University.

Under her strong leadership for twelve years, Regnery placed 48 of its books on The New York Times Best-Seller List – an enviable feat in the competitive world of publishing.

Marji was blessed with a few strong female role models in her developmental years – one of them was her first boss, a woman entrepreneur who had started her own public relations firm. She received CBL’s Woman of the Year Award at CPAC in 2005. Marji Ross is a private consultant and the devoted mother of three daughters.

Linda McClure Teetz grew up in Pittsburgh, PA, received a B.S. from Indiana University of Pennsylvania, and married her high school sweetheart, Melvin Teetz. They have been married for 55 years, have two children and four grandsons. The family moved several times with Mel’s job at United Parcel Service. Linda was a high school business teacher in Pittsburgh and Sparta, NJ; and later the office manager for an orthopedic group in Dallas, TX.

Volunteering has always been an integral part of her life, and her community service has been continuous and diverse. During her children’s early years, she was a Girl Scout Leader, Soccer Coach, Basketball Coach, Sunday School teacher, and a tireless PTA supporter. While living in New York, she served on the Board of Directors (and president of the Hospital Auxiliary) at St. Agnes Hospital, and on the Board of Directors (and as vice president) of the White Plains Beautification Foundation. While living in Atlanta, Linda served on the Board of Directors (and as president of the Members Guild) at the High Museum of Art. She was also among the first volunteers in 1994 for the 1996 Atlanta Olympics.

She currently serves on the Friends Committee for the Riverside Theatre, helps with the men’s shelter Camp Haven, has chaired the Indian River County Lincoln Day Dinner for 12 years, volunteers most of her time at Hibiscus Children's Center for abused and abandoned children, and is a member (and former president) of the Republican Women of Indian River (RWIR). She was awarded the Jeanette Becker-Riel Award for outstanding dedication and exceptional volunteer service to RWIR and the Republican Party. She volunteers in Indian River County for the presidential, state, and local campaigns.

Ursula Meese has a long and distinguished history of professional and humanitarian service to women, children, military service personnel, and the disabled.
A graduate of University of the Pacific and Radcliffe-Harvard Program in Business Administration, Ursula began her career in California as a Deputy Probation Officer. She subsequently served as a member of the San Diego County Grand Jury and as Director of the William Moss Institute, a public policy institute affiliated with American University. Until her retirement, Ursula worked for many years as Development Consultant to the Multiple Sclerosis Society’s Operation Job Match, a training and job placement service for the handicapped in Washington DC.

Mrs. Meese has also served in several advisory and community volunteer capacities. She was a member of the Attorney General’s Task Force on Family Violence at the U.S. Department of Justice during the Reagan Administration. She worked with Jeane Kirkpatrick on the U.S. Delegation to Central Africa’s women in development programs. She has also served on the Board of Trustees for the Multiple Sclerosis Society National Capital Chapter, American University, Marymount University, and the World USO. She has been honored with the San Francisco USO’s Woman of the Year award and the San Diego USO’s Leadership Award, the Multiple Sclerosis Society National Capital Chapter’s Hope Chest Award for Humanitarian Service and the Leadership Award, and Marymount University’s Mother Phelan Award for Humanitarian Service.

A mother of three, Mrs. Meese lives with her husband in Virginia and continues to be actively involved. In addition to this Institute, she serves on the Boards of the Space Shuttle Children Fund and the Trinity Forum Academy in St. Michaels, Maryland. At both our Conservative Women’s Network and Western Women’s Summit, Mrs. Meese shared memories of her friendship with Clare Boothe Luce, offering unique insight into the life of the woman for whom this Institute is named.

Darla grew up in Northeast Ohio and met Elliott Partridge (“Doc”) at Drake University Hospital. She was a nurse in training and he was working his way through Drake University as a laboratory technician at the hospital. They married in June of 1960. Darla finished nursing training at Iowa Methodist Hospital receiving a special award for pediatric education. She worked as a nurse while Doc worked his way through the University of Iowa medical school.

In 1966, Doc volunteered for the Air Force and moved the family to Langley, Virginia where he served his country as an Air Force doctor. In 1968 Darla, Doc and the children moved back to the Midwest — Eldorado, Illinois — a place they have called home for the last 30 years. Darla is a history teacher at Equality Christian Center School. She plans to continue to teach so long as she feels love for the children and is physically able to help.

The Partridges regularly make trips to Mexico to treat the inhabitants of Cardboard City — a community near the Texas border where many Mexicans live in cardboard boxes to be near factory jobs. While there, as doctor and nurse, the Partridges donate medical treatment to as many Mexican families as possible, helped by what Darla says is God’s gift to Doc of “a nose for quick diagnosis.”

Darla believes the state of women is in shambles today. “Women have been deceived, duped, robbed, and cheated by some false sense of freedom. My role models in life have been my mother and my many friends who have lived good lives, handled difficult situations, and stayed faithful to their husbands. Those are models for life.” Though she wasn’t from a church family, she was saved at 29 years old and believes that her faith in Christ has made a great deal of difference in her life, holding her home together and allowing for the fullness of life. Darla and Doc live in Illinois. They have six children.