Jay Heiler

Jay Heiler was appointed by Gov. Jan Brewer to an eight-year term on the Arizona Board of Regents, which began in February 2012. He currently serves as treasurer of the board and is a member of the Business and Finance Committee, Academic and Student Affairs Committee and the Regents Executive Committee. Regent Heiler also represents ABOR on the WestEd Board. A lawyer, journalist and political analyst, Regent Heiler is a political and media consultant serving the leadership of a wide variety of private and public sector clients in public affairs, issue management, and crisis communications. He is the former chief of staff to Gov. Fife Symington and directed both policy and communications for the Symington Administration for five-and-a-half years. He also served as an assistant attorney general in the organized crime and racketeering division of the Arizona Attorney General’s Office from 1986 to 1989, before moving to Richmond, Virginia to work as assistant editor of the editorial pages of the Richmond Times-Dispatch, where he wrote hundreds of commentaries on a wide variety of subjects, including the economy and finance, environmental policy, criminal justice, law, jurisprudence and politics. He is admitted to the bars of both Arizona and Virginia. Regent Heiler graduated with honors in journalism from Arizona State University in 1983, where he was a Pulliam Scholar and served as editor-in-chief of the 45,000-reader campus daily, The State Press. He took his law degree at ASU as well, where he was named the Truman Young Fellow and began a prosecutorial career while still in law school, preparing and trying cases at the city, county, state and federal levels. He has served on the boards of both the Goldwater Institute and the Morrison Institute, Arizona’s two leading public policy think tanks, and hosted his own public affairs television program, Straight Answers. He is founder and President of the Board for Phoenix-based charter school management organization Great Hearts Academies. He is also president of the board for the Arizona Charter Schools Association. His past community service includes a number of charitable boards and board presidency of Esperanza, a third-world medical care and public health organization headquartered in Phoenix. He has coached AAU, high school and youth basketball for 20 years. He and his wife Carol, an Arizona native and also a graduate of ASU, have four sons and one daughter and reside in Paradise Valley.