Vanessa Mendoza is CEO and Co-Founder of Kite & Key Media, a new media start-up. She previously served as the Executive Vice President at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research (MI) for eight years before leaving to launch her new project.

For nearly a decade, she had been the host of MI’s Young Leaders Circle, which brings together a robust membership of young people from and around New York City to hear from today’s most relevant public policy leaders. In this capacity and in others, Vanessa has interviewed a wide variety of guests including George Will, Andy Kessler, Jordan Peterson, Ken Langone, Cliff Asness, Eva Moskowitz, William Bratton, and many more.

Since 2011, Vanessa has overseen the launch and growth of the Adam Smith Society, serving both as strategist and supervisor of the executive team as well as serving as an advisory board member. The Adam Smith Society is an expansive, chapter-based network of MBA students, professionals, and business leaders who work to promote debate and discussion about the moral, social, and economic benefits of capitalism.

She serves on the board of Intelligence Squared U.S., an organization that seeks to restore critical thinking, facts, reason, and civility to American public discourse; on the advisory board of Open the Books, a nonprofit that works to make government spending transparent; the selection committee for the Manhattan Institute’s civil society program; and the publications committee of City Journal magazine. Vanessa lives in Brooklyn, New York with her husband and two children.