Joel Pollak

Joel Pollak is a legal researcher and author from Skokie, Illinois. He immigrated with his family to the U.S. from South Africa in 1977 and became a U.S. citizen in 1987. He attended Solomon Schechter Day School and Niles North High School, where he graduated first in his class in 1995. Joel went on to Harvard, where he was the first student to combine the fields of Social Studies and Environmental Science and Public Policy. In 1999, he graduated Magna Cum Laude and Phi Beta Kappa, and won a Rotary Foundation Ambassadorial Scholarship to study in South Africa. Joel became a political speechwriter in 2002, and worked for Tony Leon, leader of the opposition in the South African parliament, whose party stresses individual liberties, free markets, and non-racialism. He also earned a master’s degree in Jewish Studies at the University of Cape Town. Joel is married to fellow Harvard graduate Julia Pollak, who worked as a defense policy researcher at the Heritage Foundation. His father Raymond is a transplant surgeon who famously exposed corruption in Chicago’s organ allocation system. His mother Naomi is a physical therapist.