Avik Roy

Avik Roy (/ˈoʊvɪk ˈrɔɪ/; Bengali: অভীক রায়) is an American journalist and policy advisor. Originally an investment analyst, he co-founded and is president of the Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity, a think tank based in Austin, Texas.

Roy was born in Rochester, Michigan to Indian immigrant parents, and attended high school in Beverly Hills, Michigan and San Antonio, Texas. In his senior year he was named a first team member of the 1990 USA Today All-USA High School Academic Team, awarded to the twenty best performing academic students in the country. In his college years, Roy studied molecular biology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 1993, during Roy's term as a writer for the MIT student publication Counterpoint, he was unsuccessfully sued for defamation by Trinidadian Africana studies professor Tony Martin, after publishing an article detailing past controversies surrounding Martin. Roy then attended the Yale School of Medicine. Roy was active politically at Yale, where he served as the chairman for the Conservative Party of the Yale Political Union.

Between 2001 and 2004, Roy worked as an analyst and portfolio manager at investment firm Bain Capital, later working in a similar position for JPMorgan Chase, which he left to found a healthcare-focused hedge fund. In 2009, Roy was working as the managing partner at the New York-based hedge fund Mymensingh Partners, later working for the securities firm Monness, Crespi, Hardt & Co., Inc. In early 2012, Roy founded Roy Healthcare Research, an investment research firm located in New York.

In March 2009, Roy began writing The Apothecary, a personal blog focusing on healthcare policy, particularly the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. He was able to devote more time to the blog from 2010 onward, reaching a wider audience in 2010 when National Review Online featured his posts as a part of their health-care focused blog, Critical Condition, and their policy-focused blog, The Agenda, where he worked with Reihan Salam and Josh Barro. In February 2011, Roy's blog was officially picked up by Forbes as an integrated blog featured on their website. In January 2014, Roy was appointed the opinion editor for Forbes.

Roy became a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute in 2011, and began publishing studies though the institute in 2012. In 2013 Roy published the book How Medicaid Fails the Poor, a work criticizing Medicaid's poor health outcomes and limited access to physician care. In 2014, he authored a proposal for health care reform through the Manhattan Institute, entitled Transcending Obamacare: A Patient-Centered Plan for Near-Universal Coverage and Permanent Fiscal Solvency. This was elaborated on in his third publication, The Case Against Obamacare (2014).

In 2016, Roy co-founded the Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity, a think tank focused on "expanding economic opportunity to those who least have it," according to its website.

At Forbes, National Review, and other venues, Roy writes on other topics related to politics and policy. Roy's financial and medical background, along with his experience on presidential campaigns makes him a frequent guest on cable news networks such as Fox News, Fox Business, MSNBC, CNBC and Bloomberg Television. He has appeared on PBS's Newshour and on HBO's Real Time With Bill Maher. On NBC's Meet the Press, Chuck Todd described Roy and co-panelist Jonathan Cohn as "two of the most thoughtful guys that have been debating [health care] on opposite sides."

In 2012, Roy served as a health care policy advisor to Republican candidate Mitt Romney during his campaign for president. Three years later, in April 2015, Roy was hired as the senior advisor to former Texas governor Rick Perry's 2016 presidential campaign.

During Roy's tenure as Perry's senior advisor, Perry put forth several major policy initiatives, including plans to address persistent black poverty, reform Wall Street, and combat radical Islam. The Wall Street Journal, in an editorial, described Perry's address on black poverty to be “the speech of the campaign so far.” In September 2015, Perry suspended his presidential campaign. Shortly thereafter, Roy joined the 2016 presidential campaign of Marco Rubio as an advisor.

Roy has also served as a policy advisor in nonpartisan capacities, including the Board of Advisors for the National Institute for Health Care Management Foundation which he joined in 2014, and Concerned Veterans for America's Fixing Veterans Health Care Taskforce, which he co-chaired.

In July 2016, as quoted in a Vox article, Roy said that the Republican Party had "lost its right to govern, because it is driven by white nationalism rather than a true commitment to equality for all Americans."