John Hood is president of the John William Pope Foundation, a North Carolina-based grantmaker. His latest book is a novel, Mountain Folk (Defiance Press, 2021).

Hood is also chairman of the board at the John Locke Foundation, a North Carolina think tank that issues reports, hosts events, produces broadcast programs, and publishes Carolina Journal, which serves an audience of nearly 150,000 North Carolinians through its print, online, and radio editions. Hood helped found JLF in 1989 and served as its president from 1995 to 2014.

Since 1986, Hood has written a syndicated column on politics and public policy for North Carolina newspapers. It currently appears regularly in the Winston-Salem Journal, Durham Herald-Sun, Gaston Gazette, High Point Enterprise, and newspapers in 60 other communities. He also writes a monthly column, "Free & Clear," for Business North Carolina magazine. Hood is a frequent guest on talk radio and serves as a weekly panelist on “NC SPIN,” a political talk show broadcast on 28 television and radio stations in Charlotte, Raleigh, Greensboro, Greenville, Wilmington, Asheville, and elsewhere.

Hood is the author of six books. The most recent one is Our Best Foot Forward: An Investment Plan for North Carolina's Economic Recovery, published by JLF in 2012. Hood’s other books include Selling the Dream (2005), Investor Politics (2001), The Heroic Enterprise: Business and the Common Good (1996), and two volumes of family history. He is currently writing the biography of former North Carolina Gov. James G. Martin.

Hood writes and comments frequently for national media outlets, particularly National Review and its blog “The Corner.” His articles have appeared in both magazines — such as Readers’ Digest, The New Republic, Military History, and Reason — and in newspapers, including The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and The Chicago Tribune. He’s been interviewed by, among others, The Washington Post, The New York Times, CNN, CNBC, NBC, and Fox News.

At JLF, Hood created the E.A. Morris Fellowship for Emerging Leaders, a yearlong program that prepares young North Carolinians for leadership roles in government, business, and nonprofits. He also serves on the faculty of the N.C. Institute of Political Leadership, the board of the William Friday Fellowship, and the selection committee for the Marshall Memorial Fellowship.

Hood received his degree in journalism in 1988 from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he founded a magazine called The Carolina Critic was eventually published on six university campuses. Hood currently serves as chairman of the Carolina Liberty Foundation, which provides financial support to conservative and libertarian student groups at Chapel Hill.

He is a Mecklenburg County native and currently resides in Wake County with his wife, two sons, and a stepdaughter.